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THE NEW BAEDEKER 




En Voyage 



THE NEW BAEDEKER 



BEING 



CASUAL NOTES OF AN 
IRRESPONSIBLE TRAVELLER 



BY 

HARRY THURSTON PECK 



ILLUSTRATED 




NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD, AND COxMPANY 

1910 



\ 



SK^ 






Copyright, 1909, 1910, 
By Dodd, Mead, & Company 



Published, April, 1910 



THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A. 



©C1.A261807 



PIAE MEMORIAE 
CAROLI BAEDEKERI 

LIPSIENSIS 

PERMULTOBUM VIATORUM 

DUClS DILECTI ATQUE AMICI 

D. D. D. 

DISCIPULUS 



CONTENTS 

PART I 

Page 

I En Voyage 1 

II Havre and Trouville ....... 19 

III Berlin 48 

IV Rome 77 

V Rouen - ... 105 

VI Brussels and Malines • , . 130 

VII Liverpool 161 

PART II 

I Portland, Maine 182 

II Boston 207 

III Lake Pleasant, Massachusetts .... 230 

IV Utica, New York 261 

V Trenton Falls, New York , . . . . 287 
VI Atlantic City, New Jersey ..... 306 

VII From Montreal to San Francisco . . . 327 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

En Voyage Frontispiece 

A Welcome at Havre • Facing page 22 

Le Grand Quai at Havre " 32 

Le Havre from Saint e-Addresse ... " 38 

The Beach at Trouville " 44 

The Brandenburger Thor " 50 

The "Strohwitter-Heim" " 72 

St. Peter's from across the Tiber ... *' 86 
"The Historic Letters, S. P. Q. R." .... Page 97 

The Seine from Bonsecours Facing page 108 

The Cathedral of Notre Dame at Rouen " 114 

La Vendease de Chansonnettes ... " 1 20 

"L'Enfant Chantait la Marseillaise" . . " 126 

The Marketplace at Malines . . . . " 144 

Luggers off the Mersey ...... " l64 

" Rum lot, these Yankees, ain't they ? " . '' 180 

The Eastern Promenade at Portland , " 188 

The Harpswell Landing at Portland . " 196 
" The quaint and charming streets off 

Beacon Hill" '' 214 

An English Vista in Boston " 220 

Genesee Street, the Grand Boulevard 

of Utica " 266 

Through the woods at Trenton Falls . . " 296 

Trenton Falls . " 300 

The Inlet, Atlantic City *' 326 

" I have never seen anything that could 

compare with the savage beauty of 

this region " " 348 



PART ONE 

I 

EN VOYAGE 

I SHOULD not like to prescribe to any one just what 
sort of steamship he ought to choose when he first 
visits Europe. He may, if he will, select one of those 
monsters that are more than a seventh of a mile in 
length and that smash through the ocean with an 
absolute disdain of storm and waves. In them he will 
find playrooms for his children, electric elevators, a 
gymnasium, electric baths, a " solarium " domed over 
with richly painted glass, a special cafe modelled on 
the Ritz, and dark rooms in which to develop the 
photographs which he takes of his friends and of the 
ship. If he chooses to travel with dogs and cats or 
any other sort of beast, there are kennels and a 
kennel-master in the hold. If he does not desire to 
experience that blessed sense of peaceful isolation 
from the cares of life which comes to him who is in- 
evitably cut off from towns and cities in the midst 
of the great, magnificently rolling ocean, he can get 



2 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

news by wireless from other ships ; and when he 
approaches land, he can have, as it were, a ticker 
to bring the bustle of the stock exchange into his 
very stateroom. 

Or, if he has the true love of the sea within him, 
he can take a comfortable eight or nine or ten-day 
boat, and forget that there is anything in the whole 
wide world beyond the decks that glisten with the 
good salt spray, and the far range of water over 
which he casts a contented and untroubled gaze. In 
such a ship he can experience the grandeur of the 
storms and the beauty of the tranquil sea when it lies 
level in the sunlight, or when, at night, its track is 
turned to phosphorescent silver by the moon. He 
will not miss the playrooms and the gymnasium and 
the " solarium " and the cafe and the elevators and 
the dog-kennels ; but he will feel the exhilaration of 
plunging over the great billows and of sleeping that 
wonderfully restful sleep which is induced by the 
gentle rocking and rhythmic swaying of the splendid 
ship that is in reality a ship and not a garish and 
luxurious hotel, fit only for rich invalids and peevish 
women. 

In the character of an impartial guide, it would 



EN VOYAGE 3 

hardly be proper to say which one of the lines that 
cross the Atlantic is the most comfortable or gives 
you most nearly your ultimate desire. This, after 
all, is a matter of individual taste. I should be in- 
clined to classify all steamers in three groups — those 
that touch at English ports, those that touch at both 
French and Netherlandish ports, and those that ply 
directly between New York and France. There is a 
good deal of difference between these three classes. 
If you take any ship that ends its voyage in English 
waters, or that even enters English waters to receive or 
to discharge passengers, you will find it a ship very 
largely filled with young men and maidens who take 
possession of the decks, organise a concert, occupy 
your steamer-chair, turn the vessel into a combina- 
tion of upper Broadway and Piccadilly, and make 
you forget that you are on the ocean at all. There is 
something rather delightful about this airy, unconven- 
tional life. Within two days, everybody knows every- 
body else, from the girl of sixteen and the Harvard 
freshman to the maiden lady who spends hours in writ- 
ing her " impressions," and the personages of wealth 
who occupy suites of rooms far up in the air, whence 
they very seldom descend to pace the lower decks. 



4 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

On these steamers, the gregariousness is wonder- 
ful; the flirting, though of a rudimentary character, 
is incessant. Unless the sea rises in its might and 
compels the stewards to lash the deck-chairs to the 
brass railings, and to put racks upon the tables 
in the dining- saloon, there will be no end to the in- 
numerable staccato confidences which assail your ears 
above the clanging of the machinery, the quiver of 
the screws, and the clatter of the knives and forks. 
Every woman seems to have become either a Marie 
Bashkirtseff or a Mary MacLane, who instead of 
writing out what she has to say, screams it down the 
deck or from table to table in the saloon at any one 
of the seven meals which are provided for you. 

" I can't help it ! It 's my temperament ! " 

This will come to you out of Nowhere with the 
full force of feminine conviction. 

" Yes, he would have had me — that is to say, 
I would have had him ; only, you know — " " Well, 
I do just love Robert W. Chambers!" — "You can 
talk all you like, but her hair is bleached, and I don't 
believe that her Irish lace is real." — " No ! Do 
you live on Euclid Avenue, too? " — " Yes, I expect 
to gain a larger outlook from those wonderful me- 



EN VOYAGE 5 

morials of the past " — " Oh, I say ! Really, you 
know, it 's what you Americans call a hard supposi- 
tion — oh, it is jproposition? Thanks awf'ly!" — 
" What ! Is the Bourse the same as our Stock Ex- 
change ? I never knew that before ! " 

This sort of melange, confusing, intricate, un- 
related in its parts, comes to you all day long. It 
amuses you for a while; but unless you are very 
young and wish to note all the raw emotions of a 
mixed company, you feel that there is perhaps just 
a little bit too much of it. 

If, on the other hand, you try one of those stout, 
substantial steamers that ply to Rotterdam or Ant- 
werp, touching, it may be at Boulogne, you will 
find a more serious set of passengers. Many of them 
are Dutchmen or Germans, and they all look as 
though they had business on their minds. They 
eat often, and they eat a great deal, as if to get the 
full value of their passage-money. The food is good, 
too, though sometimes there is a sort of symbolism 
about it that I could never understand. Thus, on 
one of these ships, throughout the entire voyage, 
which lasted eleven days, there was placed in the 
centre of each table in the dining-saloon at every 



6 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

meal a large pale fish of a bluish tinge. I never saw 
such a fish before and I never expect to see another 
like it. No one partook of it — one naturally 
would n't — but there it was, pertinaciously promi- 
nent, leaving me with a riddle which I have never 
solved. For the rest, there is plenty of space and 
you have a sort of feeling that perhaps after ten 
days or so you will find yourself back again in 
Hoboken; and what is the more curious, you don't 
care at all whether this is going to be so or not. 
You would just as soon start out again and do it 
all over. I suppose that it is the Dutch and Flem- 
ish influence which pervades these vessels, and which 
makes them so admirably adapted for the purposes 
of a rest-cure. 

But when you go aboard a French steamer, you 
find an atmosphere that is entirely different. If you 
are making your first voyage, you will be delighted, 
because, from the moment when you ascend the gang- 
plank, you are already in Europe, already in France. 
Seven-tenths of the passenger list will be made up 
of foreigners. You will not hear English spoken 
except rarely. The neat little Breton and Norman 
sailors speak a patois that is strange to you. The 



EN VOYAGE 7 

stewards do not respond to any language save their 
own. The meals are served with ceremony. There is 
plenty of deck-room, and that deck-room is snowy 
clean and with every convenience, even to the smoul- 
dering little meche wliich is conveniently placed in a 
small copper cask so that you may light your cigar- 
ette from it, no matter which way the wind happens 
to blow. Even the tiny flags upon the chart in the 
companion-way to indicate each day's progress are 
tricoloured and therefore French. Everything is 
as neat as a pin, down to the small brass cannon 
which is lashed forward to bark out a small roar of 
joy when the distant harbour is sighted. If one may 
use an Americanism, the most expressive adjective 
which suggests itself as applicable to a French 
steamer is " cute." 

But there is something more than " cuteness " 
about it. No one ever sees there the kind of miscel- 
laneous acquaintance and companionship which you 
note upon an English vessel crowded with Americans. 
The passengers are not homogeneous. They do not, 
for the most part, come from countries where you 
may go up and speak to any one you please without 
a formal introduction. The Americans who choose 



8 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

these steamers have very much the same point of 
view. They do not want to attend " ship con- 
certs," or to Hsten to emotional revelations de- 
livered in throaty or nasal tones. They like to 
be let alone, to enjoy the solitude which is re- 
spected by their temporary companions and which 
they in turn respect in others. There is the ship 
bearing them onward with magnificent power; there 
are the quiet decks; and there is the great ex- 
panse of ocean whose strong, salt air renews one's 
life and gives one delicious hours of unbroken sleep 
at night. 

You will find something very interesting about the 
psychology of two persons who occupy berths in the 
same stateroom. When you board the vessel, you 
go down to your cabin and thrust your steamer- 
trunk under the lower berth or under the couch 
opposite. Then you take out your toilet articles and 
arrange them on one side of the mirror very much 
as though you were staking out a claim in a mining 
country. Then you go up on deck, and if you come 
down an hour or two later, after the ship is under 
way, you will find that some one else has in like man- 



EN VOYAGE 9 

ner disposed of his steamer-trunk and has placed 
his small belongings on the side which you have left 
for him. There is a sort of tacit understanding, an 
unwritten etiquette, about these things. You may 
turn in at a particular hour of the night, and your 
mysterious companion has either turned in before 
and has drawn his curtains ; or perhaps he will turn 
in later, noiseless, discreet, and hoping that he may 
not rouse you. There is the same mysterious agree- 
ment in the morning. You rise, and he rises, but 
never simultaneously. And so it is that you may 
cross the ocean without ever seeing or knowing the 
one who shares your room. It is a triumph of tact, 
and I take it that this sort of tact is essentially mas- 
culine. I fancy that women who are billeted to- 
gether adopt another course, strike up a temporary 
acquaintance, and talk things over in the watches 
of the night. But this is only a theory of mine; 
and perhaps it is an entirely wrong one. 

I have spoken of the reserve which, in general, 
prevails on a great French steamer. The only excep- 
tion is to be found in the fumoir; but that would be 
the case wherever men of any nationality come to- 
gether and blow wreaths of smoke into the air. It 



10 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

is a part of that comradeship which the great 
god Nicotine inspires in his worshippers. When it 
comes to smoking, all sorts and conditions of men are 
brothers for the time. The grubbiest ragamuffin may 
ask an emperor for a light, and the emperor will 
recognise that, by the Law of the Jungle, it is not 
only his duty but his pleasure to provide matches 
for the gamin, or even to let the latter touch a half- 
smoked and wholly stale cigarette to the glowing 
end of the imperial Partaga. And so it happens that 
in the fumoir, or the smoke-room, or whatever you 
may choose to call it, the tongues of all men are 
unloosed and they tell curious things about them- 
selves to perfect strangers — things which they have 
never told to wife or sweetheart, or to their best 
friends on shore. 

It is a delightful lounging-place, this fumoir. 
When you have paced the deck conscientiously for 
two full hours after luncheon, you go into this para- 
dise and sink down into a great leathern seat, 
stretching out your legs and pushing back your 
yachting cap. Through the port-holes there comes 
a bracing breeze which keeps the air always sweet; 
and if you are a fair sailor, you get infinite enjoy- 



EN VOYAGE 11 

ment from a good French cigarette and in watch- 
ing the gargon flitting about and taking orders ; for 
you know that very soon he will bring in an im- 
mense tray neatly piled with triangular little sand- 
wiches from which you can see the green of lettuce 
leaf and a touch of mayonnaise projecting; and if 
you like, you may have a bit of Roquefort and a 
mug of pel-el which, though it bears here a French 
name, is really the ale of good old England. Then 
everyone falls to, and the chatter of many voices 
will arise. If you have no friend with you and simply 
drink your ale and listen, you will hear some of the 
most extraordinary stories that you ever dreamed 
of. They are not told excitedly, but in level, careless 
tones ; and they let you into the secret of many 
lands and also of many human beings. There is not 
the slightest touch of egotism in these confidences. 
Those who impart them in French, or Spanish or 
English, do so because they cannot resist a certain 
spell that is cast over them by the boundless sea, 
the brief community of life aboard a ship, and a 
friendly fellowship which springs up among those 
who will never see each other any more, but who for 
the moment are brothers because they have eaten and 



12 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

drunken together, and have mingled the fragrant 
fumes of their various tobaccos. 

The confidences that come out unasked in this 
temple of truth are most surprising. Over in yonder 
corner a sunburned Englishman, between puffs from 
a short briar pipe, will tell you of things which he 
has seen and done in India and among the foot-hills 
of the Himalayas. Nowhere else would he even men- 
tion these adventures, for he is as shy as the shyest 
of his race, and he would shrink with horror from 
the thought of boasting. What he says now, drops 
from his lips unconsciously, quite ^s if he were think- 
ing to himself; and you come to know that he has 
been a fleet-footed, sure-eyed shikarri where the 
tigers kill men in the jungle. Or he will relate some 
of the strange happenings of the strangest country 
of the world, surpassing in mystery and marvel even 
such tales of Kipling as " The Mark of the Beast," 
or " The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes," or that 
very creepy narrative called " Bubbling- Well Road." 
Listen and be thankful, but do not mention Kipling 
to him. I never yet knew an Anglo-Indian who 
would not drop his taciturnity and fairly foam at 
the mouth at the sound of Kipling's name; for, 



EN VOYAGE 13 

according to " mine own people," Kipling knows 
very little about India — the real India — and what 
he does know he has grievously distorted. 

If you incline your ear in a different direction, 
you will hear a Frenchman discoursing, with the 
utmost fluency and to no one in particular, on the 
subject of marriage, that is to say, his own mar- 
riage and everybody else's marriage and on marriage 
in general. He never shows the slightest reserve in 
this ; though for a Frenchman on land to discuss 
his family would make him appear a white crow, or 
nigroque simillimus cycno. And then there is the 
Spanish-American contingent from Cuba or South 
America, and very black gentlemen from Hayti, who 
speak French with the purest Parisian accent. It 
is odd to hear a negro speak in fluent French, and 
still more odd to find a very black man who does not 
know a single word of anything but German. But 
as for the Haytian gentlemen, they are usually very 
rich and have been educated in France, with which 
country they identify themselves racially. I shall 
never forget one very tall and very well dressed 
specimen of human ebony who fell to describing some 
of the peculiarities of English and American pub- 



14 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

lie life. Having finished his argument, he shrugged 
his shoulders triumphantly and remarked: 

" Mais c'est bien different parmi nous autres — 
nous Latins ! " 

For appalling frankness, however, commend me 
to the South Americans. I remember one dark-faced, 
supple Venezuelan who was in the last stages of loco- 
motor ataxia. He could not carry his food to his 
mouth without using both his hands. He could not 
cross an absolutely level deck without pitching hor- 
ribly at all sorts of angles. His face was drawn 
and was as white as chalk. He could not have been 
more than thirty years of age, and yet a course of 
altogether vicious living had brought him to this pass. 
He explained it quite indifferently to any one who 
happened to be smoking near him. He was, in a 
way, the most dreadful sight that I have ever seen. 
His physician in Caracas had told him that, with the 
utmost care, he could not expect to live for much 
more than a single year. What was his resolve.'' 
He had a small property remaining to him in Vene- 
zuela, and he had sold it for whatever he could get. 
With the money, he was on his way to Paris to take 
one final and tremendous plunge into the maelstrom 



EN VOYAGE 15 

of swirling, horrifying sin, in the hope that at some 
moment there might descend the final blow which 
would strike him dead. To hear him tell, licking his 
chops the while, of a peculiarly vile diversion which 
he called le pigeon a quatre ailes, would give any- 
one a new insight into the possibilities of human 
depravity, and make the alleged performances of 
Tiberius at Capri appear by contrast only the 
sport of innocent childhood. Strange as it may 
seem, the thought of death was seldom present to 
his mind; but, like some evil beast, he was contem- 
plating the things that would hasten death, and he 
went over them in detail with a relish that was 
terrifying. 

After all, it is better to be out upon the great 
broad deck which stretches from stem to stern and 
where you can feel three thousand miles of salty air 
blowing all about you and filling you with life. Al- 
most every one records his impression of the ocean's 
vastness and of the comparative fragility of even the 
most powerful steamer. What Dickens wrote long 
ago is precisely what a great many persons would 
write even to-day, if they had his gift of language : 



16 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

But what the agitation of a steam-vessel is, on a night in the wild 
Atlantic, it is impossible for the most vivid imagination to conceive. 
To say that she is flung down on her side in the waves, with her 
masts dipping into them, and that, springing up again, she rolls 
over on the other side, until a heavy sea strikes her with the noise of 
a hundred great guns, and hurls her back — that she stops, and 
staggers, and shivers, as though stunned, and then, with a violent 
throbbing at her heart, darts onward like a monster goaded into 
madness, to be beaten down and battered and crushed and leaped 
on by the angry sea — that thunder, lightning, hail, and rain, and 
wind, are all in fierce contention for the mastery — that every plank 
has its groan, every nail its shriek, and every drop of water in the 
great ocean its howling voice — is nothing. To say that all is grand, 
and all appalhng and horrible in the last degree, is nothing. Words 
cannot express it. Thoughts cannot convey it. Only a dream can 
call it up again, in all its fury, rage, and passion. 

Nearly thirty years afterward, when ocean steam- 
ers had become huge in size and immense in their 
capacity, Dickens wrote from America to his friend 
John Forster the same sort of description of the 
sea. I have never been able to understand the feel- 
ing which he and so many others have expressed. 
Whether the ocean be calm or whether it be stormy, 
it always appears to be something that man has con- 
quered. It is the great steamer plunging intrepidly 
through wave and wrack that is the rightful object 
of wonder and admiration. If you can walk the deck 
at all, though you may have to grasp the life-line 



EN VOYAGE 17 

firmly, the most overwhelming sensation that comes 
to you is one of safety. For, in truth, with our 
limited vision we can see very little of the ocean at 
any one time — only a few miles out of the thou- 
sands that surround us. It is the tremendous ship 
that one can best appreciate. One thinks of it as 
of a moving island. The skill of man has welded 
it together with spikes and steel and joists. The 
ingenuity of man has hidden great engines in its 
depths to drive it against the futile onrush of the 
water. The brain of man directs its course and 
bids it go to its appointed goal. 

Just at eventime, look down the long expanse 
of deck. Forward there sound the strains of an 
orchestra. Below, hundreds of persons are dining as 
luxuriously as they would on land. In the smoking- 
room, men are laughing and telling stories over their 
cafe noir. The whole ship is flooded with light which 
gleams out of innumerable port-holes. A roll and 
a slight plunge blend into a rhj^thmic cadence as 
though the monster vessel were enjoying its swift 
passage through the deep. Even from the steerage 
far below, there come the notes of a violin and the 
sound of dancing feet. The complexity, the com- 



18 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

pleteness, and the power of it all are wonderful even 
beyond the wonder of the misty sky-line and of the 
vast ocean which stretches far beyond your ken, 

O ship, amid the illimitable sea, 

Of himian hfe, a true epitome. 

Speeding its way through shadow and through sun, . 

On, till at last its Httle course is run; 

Laden with hfe, with laughter, and with love — 

Around, the Infinite, and God above ! 



II 

hAvre and trouville 

Whether you cross the Atlantic with a millionaire's 
menagerie or whether you are satisfied with a real 
ship, there cannot possibly be any question as to 
what is the most delightful port in the whole of Eu- 
rope. The approaches to Liverpool are dull and 
commonplace, though sufficiently spick and span; 
and one feels a certain pleasure at seeing the luggers 
drift about with their reddish sails. Southampton 
is about as interesting as Hoboken; and Dover lets 
you see nothing of its real points, which I hope 
some day to describe, but which are not visible at 
once from a steamship entering the port. Ham- 
burg and Bremen are as bad as Southampton. You 
find something picturesque when you ascend the 
Scheldt to Antwerp, but not enough to count; 
while Rotterdam is a horror. Cherbourg has some 
things of interest to attract you, with its granite 
breakwater and its memories of Louis XIV. and 
Vauban; but nothing to hold you very long. Of 



20 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

course, the Bay of Naples is beautiful and effective, 
with its blue sky overhead, the curling smoke of 
Vesuvius, and the huge volcanic slopes stretching 
out before you, while Capri lies in a sort of mist 
as you steam up through the bay. But the 
whole thing is too much like a stage-setting — 
a little tea-boardy in fact, and suggestive of a 
chromo. 

If, after a week of ocean, you wish something to 
emerge before your sight slowly and serenely and 
with a mellow beauty of its own — a beauty that 
grows on you and resolves itself into minor beauties 
and delicate tones of foreign strangeness — then 
there is just one seaport for you, and that is the 
seaport of Le Havre. Nothing can be more delight- 
ful than to approach the widespread mouth of the 
river Seine a little before daybreak and while dark- 
ness still broods upon the scene. You rise j oy fully 
and go for the last time into the salle-a-manger (why 
will the French employ upon their ships the same 
words and names which they employ on shore?) and 
your own particular gargon brings you a cup of 
coifee and bowl of savoury soupe a Voignon; and 
then, fortified by the excellent meal, you light a 



HAVRE AND TROUVILLE 21 

cigarette and proceed on deck. The great ship is 
moving very slowly now, for you cannot land until 
dawn. All about you there is darkness, yet a 
sort of luminous darkness shot through with little 
points of fire. Guy de Maupassant has caught the 
eifect extremely well in his novel, Pierre et Jean. 
The novel is not among his best, and he does not 
give you in it the heart of Havre ; yet none the less 
the book is associated with Havre, and you should 
be sure to read it on the ship while you are going 
over 

Here, then, at the mouth of the Seine are twinkles 
of light appearing and disappearing in turn, and 
each one seems to beckon you and tell you something. 
Let us hear how Maupassant describes them: 

Lights mark the entrance to the harbour; while beyond, across 
the Seine, can be seen still others, fixed or flashing, with brilliant 
effulgence and dark eclipses, opening and closing like eyes — the 
eyes of harbours, yellow, red, green — watching over the dark sea 
covered with ships: living eyes of the hospitable shore, saying by 
the simple movement of their lids: "Here I am. I am Trouville. 
I am Honfleur. I am the river of Pont Audemer." 

Then on the ilhmitable sea, darker than the heavens, here and 
there stars seem visible. They tremble in the misty night — small, 
near or far, and also white, red, or green. They are almost always 
motionless, but some appear to move. They are the Hghts on vessels 
at anchor, waiting for the coming tide. 



22 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

But presently there comes a flush of rose into the 
sky, and from the deck you see the smooth white 
shores on which the water dimples in the dawn. The 
steamer moves majestically along until finally you 
behold the lighthouse, snowy white, and the huge 
semaphore, and then the ship turns inward. The 
tricolour is run up to the mast-head ; a small brass 
cannon bangs vociferously on the upper deck, and 
soon you pass along the front of the Grand Quai 
so near that you can read the signs upon the quaint 
old gabled buildings which cluster thickly there. 
" Estaminet," " Ici On Loge a Pied," " A la Belle 
Havraise," " Cafe Debit " — this is certainly not an 
aristocratic portion of the town, yet it looks as neat 
and clean as though it had been especially prepared 
for you; while the jetties and little triangular points 
of sand that run out into the sea are as pure as 
driven snow. Havre somehow appears to be the home 
of a boundless hospitality. You feel this even as you 
go steaming by the piers. Every one seems so glad 
to see the great Atlantic liner. Boys and men and 
girls all line the quai, and even the little French 
soldiers with their red legs dance about vivaciously. 
Soyez le hienvenu! they all seem to say, and what is 




> 



HAVRE AND TROUVILLE 23 

more, they seem to mean it. Here is where Havre 
differs from any other port in the world. It really 
welcomes you. It gives you a sense of buoyancy and 
joyousness so that you are immensely glad to be 
there ; and if you are new to Europe, the quaint old 
sea-front, with the crowded streets that run back 
from it, will give you all sorts of sensations before 
your steamer has turned, after passing the Avant 
Port, into the great bassin which receives the vessels 
of the Compagnie Grenerale Transatlantique, and 
where you are to land without more ado. 

Now, if you are an unwise person, you will bundle 
yourself at once into a railway train and be off to 
Paris. If you are just moderately wise you will 
stay until the afternoon and have yourself driven 
out to Frascati's, where you will certainly get a 
most delicious meal on its broad veranda, while you 
look over the sea on which you were steaming an 
hour or two before. It is very pretty and attract- 
ive, I admit. The fresh salt breeze blows in upon 
you. The sky is distilling liquid gold above your 
head. But after all, you might as well be at New- 
port or somewhere down near Belmar or at Cape 
May. Frascati's is not a part of Havre. About 



24 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

you are familiar faces and the sound of your native 
language. You are practically still at home. You 
are losing that indescribable quintessence of what is 
foreign, that sowpgon of an older world which you 
can never savour so perfectly as during the first 
few hours after you have landed fresh from com- 
fortable, commonplace America. It is like begin- 
ning the day with a Pittsburgh " stogey " instead 
of with one of those rare golden-brown and very 
thin cigars whose fragrance is of the Vuelta Abajo. 
The first six hours in a foreign land are the most 
delightful of one's whole vacation; so why merely 
let them iterate the things which you have left 
behind.'' 

So, if you are very wise indeed, slip off the steamer 
and dispose yourself in a -fiacre, and tell the man who 
drives it to go speedily along until he turns into 
the Rue de Paris — that epitome of Havre. Mau- 
passant never caught the exact feeling of this de- 
lightful street, — perhaps because he was too famil- 
iar with it. Henry James has done it in half a dozen 
lines. It is in . his story — a most interesting, 
poignant story — which he wrote years and years 
ago under the title oi Four Meetings, Perhaps you 



HAVRE AND TROUVILLE 25 

will remember. It certainly would be difficult to 
forget it — that pathetic story of the little New 
England woman, Caroline Spencer, who all her life 
in the village of Grimwinter has yearned some day 
to visit Europe, and who for years has saved and 
pinched so that she may accomplish her desire. You 
remember, perhaps, how she took a French steamer 
and how every day throughout the voyage she sat, 
as it were, in a trance with her face turned toward 
the magical lands which she was so soon to see. 
When she reaches Havre, a lout of a cousin of hers 
who is studying " art " in Paris, meets her and con- 
cocts a story which appeals to her soft-heartedness ; 
so that she gives him all her money, except enough 
to take her home again. Her whole stay in Europe 
has been one of a few short hours ; and yet, after 
all, one has a sort of feeling that four or five hours 
in Havre meant to her as much as years of travel 
mean to those idle rich who bring nothing with them 
when they visit Europe and who, therefore, carry 
nothing home with them except what they have pur- 
chased in the shops. 

But never mind the story of Four Meetings. You 
shall read it for yourself. My point is that in it 



26 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

Mr. James has given us with the hand of a master 
the Rue de Paris and almost Havre itself: 

The early autumn day was warm and charming, and our stroll 
through the bright-coloured, busy streets of the old French seaport 
was sufficiently entertaining. We walked along the sunny, noisy 
quays and then turned into a wide, pleasant street which lay half 
in sun and half in shade — a French provincial street, that looked 
hke an old water-colour drawing : tall, grey, steep-roofed, red-gabled, 
many-storied houses ; green shutters on windows and old scroll-work 
above them; flower-pots in balconies and white-capped women in 
doorways. We walked in the shade; all this stretched away on 
the sunny side of the street and made a picture. 

It is indeed a picture; and, therefore, tell your 
cocJier to drive you to a very French hotel — very 
old and very good — which is nearly at the head 
of the Rue de Paris and a few doors below the Place 
Gambetta; so that when you choose to stroll out 
into the sun, a few steps will take you to a curious 
and interesting square with trees and flower-stands 
and little kiosques down the middle, with a row of 
hotels and their broad terrasses on one side, and on 
the other, the huge Bassin du Commerce in which 
great ships float quietly in the very heart of the city. 

But immediately on your landing, don't be lured 
away into the Place Gambetta ; because by this time 
you will have forgotten the very early breakfast 



HAVRE AND TROUVILLE 27 

which you had on board the ship, and you will be 
ravenously hungry. So, after getting rid of all 
traces of the sea and garbing yourself immaculately, 
go down to the first floor of the Hotel de Normandie 
— I don't see why I should n't mention its real name. 
Its great outer doors give upon the Rue de Paris ; 
but within, there is a courtyard paved with ancient 
flagstones and provided with benches set among its 
palm trees. From these you can witness the whole 
economy of the hotel — the presiding genius, whom 
every one calls " Mees," because she thinks that she 
can speak English, the hulking portier in his uni- 
form, the little chasseur flying to and fro at every 
one's commands, the neat white-capped maids ascend- 
ing and descending the stairways, occasionally a 
cook emerging from some remote recess, and waiters 
bearing fruits and flowers to prepare the table d'hote 
for the approaching dejeuner. Don't go near the 
table d'hote. It will afford many things that are 
admirably cooked and served — nothing could be 
better; yet the first hours after one leaves the ship 
are the hours for asserting one's own individuality 
and for eating what one pleases and not what other 
persons have imagined for him. 



28 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

You will find a small restaurant just inside the 
street entrance of the hotel. It is presided over by 
a waiter who has apparently been forty years of 
age for the last two decades. He has a friendly 
alert air; and anything in the world that you want, 
he will promptly provide, for the honour of the Hotel 
de Normandie. You will naturally order some sort 
of potage or anything that your fancy suggests ; 
but whatever else you do, be sure to call for mussels. 
I can see you turning up your nose at this. In 
America, who eats mussels, except at rare times per- 
haps some pickled mussels? They are placed by us 
in the same category as tripe. But behold the genius 
of the French! When the waiter brings in an enor- 
mous silver bowl with a dome-like silver cover, and 
when he removes the cover — then you forget every- 
thing in the world except the delicious savoury smell 
of the steam which rises from the myriad shells that 
open lovingly for you to extract from them the dainty 
sea-flavoured mussel that lurks within. Mussel, did 
I say.? No, these are not the ordinary mussels that 
Americans know. French gastronomic genius has 
transformed them into monies marinierey and the 
difference is like the difference between Coney Island 



HAVRE AND TROUVILLE 29 

beer and the nectar of the immortal gods. In some 
deftly magical way the French chef has imparted a 
delicious suggestion to the monies, just that indefin- 
able, evanescent memory of garlic — garlic which in 
the hands of the ordinary cook is an offensive and 
deadly weapon, but which in the hands of a cook of 
high degree — an artist in fact — is a means for 
achieving some of the supreme triumphs of his art. 
After the moules, you will have anything you care 
for — dainty slices of galantine^ or maybe capon 
nestling amid water-cresses, and then perhaps some 
peaches in a little basket where the fruit is enfolded 
in leaves from its own tree and ripened to precisely 
the right turn on some ancient wall in the sunshine 
of an old French garden. Then, perhaps, some 
pulled bread and a bit of Camembert and a cafe 
Mazagran in a long glass. No one remembers now 
the battle that gave its name to this particular prep- 
aration of coffee — which shows that men may come 
and empires may fall and armies may be dashed 
into fragments upon the battle-field, and their for- 
tunes may be forgotten; but the genius of cookery 
remains triumphant and its achievements are never 
lost. 



30 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

Well, after you have had the movies and the cold 
chicken and a salad and some long rolls of brown- 
crusted French bread, and after you have consumed 
the Camembert and drunk the Mazagran, you relax 
with a sigh of comfort while you blow a peaceful 
cloud and look out into the Rue de Paris, lazily and 
with infinite content. It is so delightful to be ashore 
and in this quaint and rich old town. It is fine to 
have so many good things at your disposal and to 
be taking in, as it were, through the open window, 
a sort of panorama of Old France. Directly across 
the street is a place devoted to the making of every 
possible kind of chocolate — forms and conceptions 
to which Mr. Huyler's imagination never soared. 
On the sidewalk, in the sun, men go by in blouses, and 
sturdy Norman girls wearing rather extraordinary 
caps and with portentous earrings. There is a 
clatter of wooden shoes upon the cobblestones, for 
nearly half the population prefer to walk in the mid- 
dle of the street. Sailors just off their ships, and 
tidy bourgeois of the • town, and pretty girls out 
shopping with their somewhat too plump mammas 
— a flutter of awnings, an impression of briskness, 
neatness and, more than all, a sense of having been 



HAVRE AND TROUVILLE 31 

there for centuries upon centuries, ever since the time 
of Louis XII. — all these combine to affect your 
imagination and delight your senses. 

The Rue de Paris slopes leisurely down to the 
Grand Quai; and as you stroll along it, you see on 
every hand evidences that Havre is not only a sea- 
port, but one of the great seaports of the world. In 
France it ranks second only to Marseilles. The first 
thing that attracts your attention is the fact that 
so many shops incidentally deal in foreign postage- 
stamps. Whether you go into a tobacconist's or a 
magazin de hlanc or a confectioner's or a hardware 
shop, you are pretty certain to see in the windows 
great piles of envelopes — those beautiful fat, bulg- 
ing envelopes which delight the heart of every in- 
cipient stamp-collector — bearing in red and green 
letters such inscriptions as " 500 Timbres Tous Dif- 
ferents," while smaller envelopes contain fewer but 
choicer specimens. This amateur stamp industry 
shows that Havre is in communication with all parts 
of the world. From it go forth ships to Western 
Africa, to Madagascar, to Java and Sumatra and 
Japan, as well as to specifically French possessions, 
such as Tonquin and Martinique and New Caledonia. 



32 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

Thousands of families in Havre receive letters from 
their relatives in these countries, and they frugally 
remove the postage-stamps from them and sell them 
to the keepers of the shops. The stamps are prob- 
ably all picked over every little while by some expert ; 
for I have never found anything very rare among 
them; but the ever present packets are a reminder 
of the maritime importance of the city. 

The same fact comes to you more forcibly when 
you reach the Grand Quai itself. Along the contin- 
uous wharf and facing the open water, are innumer- 
able little restaurants and shops which sell marine 
stores and junk and all sorts of things that have a 
tarry smell. But what surprises you most, and gives 
an odd exotic touch to the whole wharfage, is the 
screaming chatter of about a million parrots that 
swing in cages festooned along the widely open doors 
of all these buildings. Probably every sailor who 
comes back from Brazil or Africa or Asia or Central 
America or wherever it is that parrots live, brings 
with him a dozen of these birds and sells them for 
a song on the Grand Quai. There they form an 
innumerable company swinging in the sun and ruf- 
fling their feathers of blue and green and gold and 




cu 
> 



c3 



HAVRE AND TROUVILLE 33 

crimson until you might imagine that you were in 
a tropical forest or the heart of a rainbow. 

It is wonderful how orderly even this part of a 
French maritime city is. In New York or Liverpool, 
for example, along the water-front, one naturally 
expects to find a drunken sailor at every turn, and 
to hear the sound of crapulous carousing at night 
from the various bar-rooms and " saloons." But the 
Grand Quai at Havre is as demure and self-respect- 
ing as Upper Fifth Avenue. The estammets emit 
no special sounds of revelry. In the little cafe- 
restaurants an occasional group of sailors wearing 
earrings will sit around a table consuming a few 
bocks, and smoking long-stemmed pipes ; but they 
never howl or make any sort of a disturbance, and a 
placid old Norman dame in her white cap waits upon 
them in a casual friendly way. You may go into 
one of these places yourself and take your seat at 
a table if you desire to, and ask for something to eat. 
The floor is sanded. There are no tablecloths or 
napkins. You will be served perhaps with wooden 
bowls or with crockery about as thick as armour- 
plate. But everything is as neat as wax, and for a 
franc or less you will get a meal more appetising 



34 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

than the average country inn of America ever 
dreamed of. 

This matter of public order in France is rather a 
mystery to me. You see the undersized gendarmes 
wherever you choose to go ; but they efface them- 
selves and never seem to have any particular busi- 
ness. If you address them, they are immensely civil, 
in fact, almost Chesterfieldian. I remember asking 
one of them the way to a particular place. He did 
not, like an American policeman, grunt and mumble 
out a sentence both elliptical and syncopated. Far 
from that, he seemed to be much honoured by the 
inquiry. He walked out into the middle of the trot- 
toir and struck an attitude, holding his left hand 
on his heart, with the other free for pointing. 
" Permettez, Monsieur," he began ; and then as I 
graciously permitted it, he gave me the direction 
several times over, and finally bowed, saluted, and 
retired to his own particular niche against the 
wall. 

It is only in Havre, however, that I have witnessed 
two interferences by the French police on behalf of 
public order. The first was a rather curious one 
and shows the paternal character of government in 



HAVRE AND TROUVILLE 35 

France. Down past the Rue du General Faidherbe 
there is, or was, a large dingy building, a sort of 
combination of a cafe cliantant and a restaurant. 
At night there blazed from its front in gas jets 
" The Star." The name being English, it was prob- 
ably meant to attract the custom of English sailors; 
yet I never saw any Enghsh sailors there, but only 
the townsfolk of Havre and a sprinkling of fisher- 
men. Sitting up in a sort of perch which is reserved 
for strangers distinguished enough to pay half a 
franc for this seclusion, I watched with much interest, 
one evening, both the performance on the stage and 
the behaviour of the audience who were sitting at 
long parallel tables on the main floor below. Some 
of them were smoking and some of them were drink- 
ing cider — in Normandy the eating-houses usually 
display the sign " Cidre a Discretion " — and some 
were also eating bread and meat. One especial 
group attracted my attention. The man was prob- 
ably an artisan, good-natured and burly. With him 
were his wife and four or five children of various 
ages. The father and mother and elder children had 
consumed a large amount of cold meat and cheese 
and salad, and likewise no small quantity of sickly 



36 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

home-brewed beer. In this particular cafe chant' 
ant, it is not customary for the artists, after each 
turn, to do what the French call faire la quete, 
that is, to carry around a wooden bowl after the 
fashion of passing a hat or a contribution-box. On 
the contrary, the people in the audience show their 
approval by flinging sous and half sous upon the 
stage. After a particularly fetching song or an 
amusing piece of jugglery, a rain of coppers goes 
up from the auditorium and is picked up by the 
performers, as an opera singer would pick up a 
bouquet. 

Now my friend, the artisan, had evidently been 
somewhat mellowed by his draughts of beer; and 
he let himself go in this pastime of flinging coppers. 
I should judge that he must have thrown as much 
as sixteen cents upon the stage, when suddenly, in 
a noiseless way, a gendarme appeared from nowhere 
and began to speak earnestly to this patron of the 
arts. There was much talk. Madame engaged in 
it with considerable vivacity. The elder children 
joined in. A dozen or more of persons who sat 
about them were also drawn into the vortex. Finally 
the proprietor of the place came down and took a 



HAVRE AND TROUVILLE 37 

hand. I had n't the slightest notion of what it was 
all about ; for I could not hear what they were say- 
ing. But presently the talk subsided, the gendarme 
withdrew, and everything went on as before, except 
that the artisan threw no more coppers on the stage. 
My curiosity was so much excited that I descended 
from my isolated perch and managed to get the 
proprietor into a comer for an explanation. 

*' Ah," said he with an expressive shrug, " the 
good ouvrier was spending far too much money — 
more than he could afford. He was slightly warmed 
by the food and drink and the excitement of the 
music, and so he expended an extravagant sum." 

" But," said I, " it was his own business, and his 
own money, and he seemed sober enough. Did his 
wife object? " 

" Unhappily, no," returned the proprietor. " Ma- 
dame was most unreasonable. She was even quite 
willing that he should continue to throw whole sous 
upon the stage. Naturally, in the interest of the 
family, the agent interfered. It is surely a misfor- 
tune to allow a good fellow, merely because he is 
un peu gris, to squander the money which his family 
may need." 



38 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

There was much sense in this ; and yet it seemed 
strange enough to an individualistic American that 
the poHce should interfere to prevent a man from 
doing what he pleased with what was quite his own, 
especially when his wife and children were wilHng. 

The only other instance of the operation of French 
law that I have seen was a very different one, and yet 
exceedingly instructive. Walking one day in the out- 
skirts of Havre along the line of the coast where rise 
the huge falaises, I came rather suddenly upon a 
sight that caused me to stop. For here was the 
beginning of an interesting affair. There was a 
little one-story cottage in the background. In front 
of it stood, like a bull, a mighty, shaggy-haired, 
rough-bearded labourer, facing two gendarmes who 
had evidently come to take him into custody. They 
were approaching him with some caution, and it 
seemed to me that their caution was most necessary ; 
for he was as big as the two of them together — ■ 
a perfect buffalo of a man — while they were slim, 
short, insignificant-looking persons, rather more so 
because of their cocked hats and awkward uniforms. 
Apparently the labourer had been beating his wife 
and threatening to kill her; but with the inconsist- 




OJ 



< 



(n 



o 



g5 



HAVRE AND TROUVILLE 39 

ency of her sex she was now saying unpleasant things 
about the minions of the law. They, on their side, 
had thoughtfully brought with them a -fiacre which 
was waiting in the road near by, while the driver 
looked on with profound indifference. 

The gendarmes advanced a step or two. 

" Sac a papier ! " growled the culprit. 

His tone was most ferocious, but how could any 
tone give dignity to such an absurd ejaculation? 
After all, it is only English and Americans who have 
a real gift for straight profanity. Fancy a cow- 
boy cornered by a sheriff's posse and finding noth- 
ing more energetic to say than " Paper bag ! " 

I am tempted here, being a leisurely person, to 
indulge in a short excursus on the general ineffec- 
tiveness of all foreign profanity. Even the ancients 
could do nothing more than call upon the names of 
their various gods and on objects that were dear 
to them. The Greeks thought this a very tremen- 
dous thing to do ; and so Rhadamanthus is said to 
have ordered men and women to swear by animals 
instead. Socrates, if correctly reported, used to say 
*' By the dog ! " whereas Lampon more feebly still 
used to roar out " By the goose ! " The Romans 



40 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

followed in the footsteps of the Greeks. In modern 
times, the Spaniards have perhaps the most objec- 
tionable vocabulary in existence. It has a sort of 
rancid richness about it which comes from the Arabs, 
and it is filled with blasphemy. Yet in straight 
swearing, Spanish is rather feeble and so is Italian. 
As for the Germans, they are curiously defective 
in thunderous oaths. I never could quite understand 
the workings of the German mind in this respect. 
Germans will call upon the Deity with the greatest 
freedom and on all occasions and think nothing of 
it, whereas they will be tremendously shocked if you 
use some expression in which the subtlest psychology 
can find nothing to be ashamed of. Thus, some 
mild-eyed, white-haired, gentle Hausfrau will ejacu- 
late " Lieber Gott ! " or " Herr Je ! " if she happens 
to burn a pancake; whereas, if you bark your shin 
and cry out " Zum Henker ! " she will look at you 
with horror. I wish that some one would explain to 
me why it is so dreadful to a German to hear you 
say " To the hangman ! " But after all, the French 
are the least capable of saying something really 
strong. A rather amusing instance of this can be 
found in Zola's La Debacle, Turn to that tremen- 



HAVRE AND TROUYILLE 41 

dous chapter in which he describes the taking of 
Bazeilles by the Bavarians. These rough soldiers 
have forced their way inch by inch through bloody 
streets amid a shower of bullets. Every window and 
a hundred loop-holes spurt fire on them. The towns- 
people are fighting like demons with any weapon that 
comes to hand. Flames burst from the roofs, and 
the scene is one of dreadful carnage and destruction. 
Then the Bavarians seize the near-sighted Weiss — 
a civilian who has shot many of their number and 
whom they have caught red-handed. His wife 
screams terribly and clings about his neck, and there 
comes to her " a short stocky Bavarian with an 
enormous head surrounded by a bristling forest of 
red hair and beard. He was besmeared with blood, 
a hideous spectacle, resembling nothing so much as 
some ferocious, hairy denizen of the woods, emerg- 
ing from his cavern and licking his chops, that are 
still red with the gore of the victim whose bones he 
has been crunching." This human brute lays his 
huge paws on Henriette and drags her from her hus- 
band's arms. Weiss draws himself up, bursting with 
rage, and hurls at the German the most dreadful 
epithet in his vocabulary. What is this dreadful 



42 THE NEW BAEDEICER 

epithet ? Why, simply, " Sales cochons ! " Now 
what is one to think of " Dirty pigs ! " It takes 
you immediately away from the horrid scene of war 
and reminds you of a small urchin sticking his head 
through a hole in a picket fence and squeaking at 
some other urchin in the neighbouring back-yard. 
No, it is only the English and the Americans who 
have the gift of true profanity. That of the Eng- 
lishman comes down solidly like a bludgeon. That 
of the American blazes and crackles like a lightning- 
bolt. Yet both are effective. They are not com- 
mendable, but somehow they are clean. The English- 
man shows a sort of concentrated intensity. The 
American shows a vivid, lurid blend of anger and 
imagination. 

Well, all this time I have been keeping the labourer 
standing face to face with the two gendarmes. The 
latter advanced still another step, and each took the 
ruffian by one of his arms. 

" Nom d'un chien ! " roared their adversary. But 
what could you expect of a man who Would say 
" Name of a dog ! " as the worst thing that he could 
think of. All the same, I was looking every moment 
to see him raise the gendarmes off the earth with his 



HAVRE AND TROUVILLE 43 

mighty arms and smash their heads together, when in 
some magic, mysterious way, as it were in the twink- 
ling of an eye, he was down upon the ground, a pair 
of handcuffs were snapped upon his wrists, and in a 
moment more he was lying like a log in the bottom 
of the fiacre and being driven briskly toward the 
town, while the two gendarmes were sitting unemo- 
tionally upon his prostrate form. How they did it, 
Heaven only knows, but I have always had a good 
deal of respect for these gentry ever since. They 
evidently know their business, and they have a sort 
of jiu-jitsu of their own invention. I never saw 
anything neater in my life. 

If you are a reader of Pierre et Jean you will 
probably try to find the particular cabaret or bras- 
serie in which the girl with a fringe first gave the 
half-clue to Pierre which led him to solve his mother's 
shameful secret. I think I know where it is myself 
— a little place just off the Rue de Paris. It is 
easier still to discover the residence of Madame Rose- 
milly at Sainte-Adresse. If you wish to make the 
whole Maupassant pilgrimage, you can take the 
boat which runs from Havre to Trouville in about an 
hour — the boat which carried Pierre to that pleas- 



44 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

ure-place where he found no pleasure, but only 
gloomier and blacker thoughts. You are very 
likely to have a rough time in the little steamer ; and 
when you reach the long iron pier at TrouviUe, you 
will not be sorry to go ashore and to walk for half 
a mile along " the summer boulevard of Paris " and 
see a bit of what is chic and luxurious and elegant 
in French fashionable life collected on this marvel- 
lous beach. Suppose we let Maupassant describe 
it for us. 

On the great bank of yellow sand, stretching from the jetty to the 
Ex)ches Noires, parasols of every colour, hats of every shape, dresses 
of every shade, m groups before the bathing-houses, in lines along 
the sea, or scattered here and there, resemble, in truth, enormous 
bouquets in an immeasurable meadow. The confused sounds, near 
or far, of voices made distinct by the thin air, the calls, the cries of 
children being bathed, the clear laughter of women, all formed a 
sweet, unbroken clamour, which was blended with the imperceptible 
sea air, and was inhaled with it. 

This is a very pretty bit of description, but, of 
course, Maupassant could not stop there. His sixth 
sense, of which Henry James speaks in criticism, 
compels him to see something brutal under all this 
gaiety and colour and life. He must regard it as 
" the flowering of feminine perversity." That is 




o 



o 

a 

pq 



HAVRE AND TROUVILLE 45 

why I am not going to quote him any further; be- 
cause, for my part, I Hke to look upon what is pretty 
and attractive and to enjoy it as it seems to be and 
as what in all probability it actually is. Why im- 
pute all sorts of evil motives and sinister designs 
to these dainty butterflies who flit up and down 
the beach at Trouville or nestle under the great 
striped umbrellas or plunge into the sparkling sea? 
I am sure that many of them are above all criticism ; 
for did I not myself find there, in this centre of 
French frivolity, an American professor of eco- 
nomics entirely forgetful of the splendour of the 
sky and the blueness of the sea and the bizarre but 
wonderful effect of colour on the beach? He was off 
in a comer by himself, working up statistics with 
an adding-machine, and his wife was dutifully assist- 
ing him. 

Trouville has gone off a little now from what it 
used to be under the Second Empire, which trans- 
formed it from a mere fishing port into a brilliant 
capital of fashion. One is rather impressed by the 
fact that many of the ladies are from the provinces 
of France and that they dress in a style sufficiently 
archaic to excite the mirth of any American woman 



46 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

from Altoona or Buffalo or Colorado City. Under 
the Empire, Trouville was simply Paris transferred 
to the seashore. And, by the way, it is not Mau- 
passant who can claim a complete Kterary pro- 
prietorship in Trouville. He must, at any rate, 
share it with Ouida, since the first chapter of Moths 
opens vividly on this beach. 

The yachts came and went, the sands glittered, the music sounded, 
men and women in bright-coloured stripes took headers into the tide 
or pulled themselves about in Httle canoes ; the snowy canvas of the 
tents shone like huge white mushrooms, and the faces of all the 
houses were Uvely with green shutters and awnings brightly striped 
like the bathers. People, the gayest and best-bom people in Europe, 
laughed and chattered, and made love. 

It was at Trouville, you will remember, that the 
frivolous and naughty Lady Dolly received her 
large-eyed and serious daughter Vera, and where 
Vera fell in love with the golden-throated Correze, 
but where she was compelled to marry the evil Rus- 
sian, Prince Zouroff. It is wonderful how the crea- 
tions of literature can populate a place and give it 
interest. As I lie upon my back in the sand at 
Trouville, with half -shut eyes, and comfortably bak- 
ing in the sun, the persons who move along the board- 
walk (which is probably the grandfather of all the 



HAVRE AND TROUVILLE 47 

boardwalks in America) seem quite familiar to me. 
I have met them years ago. I know their stories, 
their hopes, their griefs, their jealousies, and I know 
also what is going to happen to them. Thus does 
literature impinge on life, and make life luminous 
and full of an added interest which, if no one wrote 
good books, it would never in the world possess. 



in 

BERLIN 

At the further end of Unter den Linden, away from 
the royal palace and the statue of old Frederick on 
his lumpy horse, that famous avenue broadens out 
into the Pariser Platz. Thence, one gazes through 
the stately Brandenburger Thor and beholds the 
Thiergarten with its expanse of greenery, its allur- 
ing alleys and its glint of snowy marble. If you 
enter one of the cream-coloured buildings which flank 
the Brandenburger Thor, you may ascend four 
flights. You will then discover, on the outer door 
of an apartment, a bright brass plate with an in- 
scription announcing it to be a pension, and bearing 
the name of the Frau Inspektor who conducts it. 

A most delightful pension it is — immaculately 
neat, and furnished in the best of taste. Its clientele 
is small but cosmopoHtan. The Frau Inspektor, with 
her snowy hair and winter-apple cheeks and smile 
of rare benevolence, is a dear. To live there is a 
liberal education. In time you will come to know 



BERLIN 49 

the whole Familie Buchholz in real life, which is better 
even than to meet them in Herr Stinde's pages. 
You will hear no English. The subtleties of the Ber- 
liner Dialekt will gradually percolate your brain; 
and at last you will thoroughly enjoy the talk which 
lets you into the rivalries of Frau Buchholz and 
Frau Bergfeldt, the love affairs of Auguste and 
young Weigelt, and the importance of Herr Doktor 
Wrenzchen. The place has an atmosphere which is 
German to the last degree, and this atmosphere af- 
fords the proper medium through which to see 
Berlin. 

To be sure, there are some complications about 
living in the pension. Take, for example, the matter 
of the keys. When you have been received and fa- 
vourably passed upon — a letter of introduction is 
strictly necessary — the Frau Inspektor entrusts 
you with four keys. First there is The ScJililssel, 
which opens the great door below. This Schlilssel 
is a big bronze affair, six inches long, and it weighs 
not less than half a pound. It might well have been 
the key to the Bastille or to one of the many dun- 
geons described by the veracious Baron von der 
Trenck. Then there is the HausscJilussel, which will 



50 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

let you pass the outer door of the apartment from 
the fourth-floor hall. This, too, is pretty large. 
Next comes a Httle Schlussel for the door within the 
outer door. The Frau Inspektor carefully explains, 
with a look of innocent cunning, that after inserting 
this Schlussel in the lock, you must first turn it 
twice to the right and then once to the left — or 
is it twice to the left and once to the right? Any- 
how, there is something to remember. And finally 
there is the Thiirschlilssel, which admits you to 
your own particular rooms. 

When you have got all these four keys down in 
your trousers' pocket, you feel like Mark Twain's 
jumping frog after he had swallowed the pound of 
shot. And if, some evening, you chance to stay 
out rather late at the Cafe Bauer and are deluded 
into thinking that Eierponsch is a beverage for babes 
— O, that smooth, seductive, velvety, demoniac Eier- 
ponsch! — and you reach the Pariser Plaz after the 
portier has gone to bed — ! In Heaven's name, 
which Schlussel is the Schlussel that you need for 
each of those confounded doors as you go upward 
in the dark? Is it the big Schlussel or the little 
Schussel or one of the medium-sized Schusselsf 




bD 
a 



BERLIN 51 

And must you give the little Schliissel two turns to 
the right and then one to the left or two turns to 
the left and then one to the right? What with 
Schliissel after Schliissel, you get so schliissely that 
at last you give it up and make for the nearest hotel, 
where a Polizeibeamter worries you with questions, 
because you have neither luggage nor a passport. 

Also, an American or an Englishman will find 
himself a little bit uncomfortable in the Pariser 
Platz, because of the well-known Teutonic horror of 
fresh air. My room is a delightful one, with a win- 
dow which looks out upon the Thiergarten. But 
in summer, Berlin is sometimes warm and stuffy — 
not as New York is warm, yet oppressed by a certain 
deadness of the air. At night I keep my window 
open, but it does not make much difference. So, 
finally, I hit upon the scheme of leaving open the 
door into the hall after all the household have re- 
tired, and of opening also the door into the dining- 
room. Then the sluggish air begins to stir and lets 
a stream of coolness pour into the room. But alas! 
In the still hours of the night come stealthy steps 
along the hall, and both doors are closed tight, so 
that again I swelter on the feather-bed. A second 



52 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

night and still a third this happens, and then I 
seek the Frau Inspektor. 

" Ja, mein Herr, it is I who close the doors that 
you have so carelessly left open. Know you not that 
the night air is very dangerous? I almost fancied 
that your window was not closed ! " 

" My window was wide open," I reply. " And I 
must have air — plenty of it ! " 

The Frau Inspektor gasps and lifts her hands 
in horror. 

*^ Unmoglich! It cannot be! Ne! ne! A few 
more nights and the Herr will be so ill, and then — 
oh, NachldssigJceit! " 

All argument is useless. The Frau Inspektor, out 
of the very goodness of her heart, will never hear 
of such a suicidal thing as letting me enjoy a 
draught of air in summer. In imagination she sees 
herself responsible for my speedy death. Her mild 
blue eyes begin to fill with tears. So I retire van- 
quished. But in the watches of the next sleepless 
night I plan a new campaign. 

The Frau Inspektor has a son, a child of forty 
years, whom both the Frau Inspektor and her 
daughter, the Fraulein Emmi, coddle most absurdly, 



BERLIN 53 

though they view him with profound respect because 
he is a male and because he resembles (so I hear) 
his father, the late Herr Inspektor. I waylay him 
and desire his attention. 

" When you were a student in the Gymnasium, 
Herr Otto," I begin, " did you ever read any stories 
of American life? " 

" Ach, j a ! " returns Herr Otto, his mind aroused 
to pleasing reminiscence. " So many read I then ! 
Zum beispiel, the stories by a most wonderful ro- 
mancer written. We read them all, we younger ones 
— so gem! What was the name? Well do I re- 
member it — Herr Kupfer, or it may be Kupper. 
He wrote of the red savages in your country, and 
of the all so-skilful Scharfschiltz — how call you 
him? — Lederstrumpf ! And the great forests — 
larger even than the Griinewald ! " 

" Yes, yes," I cried. " And you remember how 
Herr Cooper has described our hfe — how we live 
in those open forests through the summer, and how 
even in winter we have only huts of logs, that do 
indeed keep out the snow, but that let the wind blow 
through? " 

" Wvmderhar! " murmured Herr Otto. " A 



54 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

strange people, die Amerikaner! I remember. Aber 
— das ist nicht Sitte bei wns! " 

My heart sank as I heard this fatal formula. 
When Germans tell you that a thing is not the 
custom with them, they feel that the very last word 
has been said and that the incident is closed. How- 
ever, I returned to the attack. 

" Of course, Herr Otto, such habits are unknown 
in a nation which has reached a high plane of civil- 
isation — a nation Hke Germany, for example. But 
it is different with us. / don't believe that in all 
America there is such a thing as a porcelain stove. 
And even in winter, Americans haven't yet. learned 
to lie at night between two feather-beds. I have al- 
ways been used to a great deal of air, and I can't be 
civilized all at once. Naturally, the Frau Inspektor 
does not understand this, because she has not studied 
the ways of strange peoples. But you, who are a 
man of the world and a great reader, will know that 
I am in no danger of falling ill from having the 
doors open at night. Indeed, if they are to be closed 
in the hot weather, I shall have to go out and sleep 
under a tree in the Thiergarten — and that, you 
know, is Polizeiwidrig — streng verbotert" 



BERLIN 55 

" Ja, ja, that understand I," assented Herr Otto, 
preening himself visibly. " I will myself speak to 
the Frau Mamma." 

And he must have spoken to her very effectually, for 
that night and thereafter the doors were all left open, 
and I slept as comfortably as Leatherstocking himself. 

But, putting aside the matter of the keys and the 
need of a mild duplicity in the management of Herr 
Otto, there is nothing to fret one's soul in this neat 
little pension. At the Mittagsessen and the Ahendes- 
sen there is daily gathered a small group of inter- 
esting human beings whom chance fortune has drawn 
together here. Besides the Frau Inspektor, and 
Herr Otto, and the Fraulein Emmi, there is a good- 
natured gigantic Swedish basso who has sung the 
Dragon's part in Siegfried, from St. Petersburg to 
San Francisco. There is a silent little Frenchman 
whose German is apparently limited to about twenty 
words and who seems to have nothing to do ; so 
that I like to believe him to be a sort of diplomatic 
spy from the Quai d'Orsay. And again, there is a 
young lady from Vienna who represents the Ad- 
vanced School of German Thought, for she smokes 
multitudinous cigarettes after dinner, goes out alone 



5Q THE NEW BAEDEKER 

at all hours, and returns (also alone) at two In the 
morning from goodness knows where. Finally, there 
is a Finnish girl who is learning German, so as to 
teach it in Helsingfors. She has a rather plain face, 
but she wears a bang and that makes her distinctly 
fascinating. There are many young men and maidens 
in America to-day who have never seen bangs — or 
" fringes," if you like — worn. Apparently the 
bang, long since expelled from Western Europe, has 
only now reached Finland. For my part, I am hop- 
ing for a general renaissance of the bang. If the 
fact were only understood, there is no woman so 
plain, so naturally unprepossessing, as not to appear 
attractive when she wears a bang. The deep fringe 
of hair falling low upon the forehead has a strange 
power of creating fascination, of making an appeal, 
of compelling man's attention. Perhaps it is the 
same sort of appeal by which the primitive woman 
with tumbled tresses stirred the first desire of the 
cave-man amid the infinite silence of unbroken forest. 
But the little Fraulein Stella is quite unconscious of 
her charm, and eats eggs and Leberwurst without 
an esoteric thought. 

And so do we all eat eggs and Leberwurst and 



BERLIN 57 

many other things more recondite. The Frau In- 
spektor has a carefully prepared cycle of repasts. 
By noting down what you have had on any particular 
day, you can forecast just what you are to have on 
the corresponding day next week. It is all very 
good; except that on the day appointed for berry- 
soup and smoked goose, I usually find it convenient 
to dine out at Killer's on the Linden. But when 
the Frau Inspektor treats us to mock-hare (or 
Falsche Hase) I am always present. Mock-hare is 
just as near as Germans can come to producing 
Philadelphia scrapple. Scientifically, mock-hare 
and scrapple may be viewed as representing abso- 
lutely independent research arriving at almost 
identical results — like John Couch Adams and M. 
Leverrier discovering the planet Neptune. If the 
Frau Inspektor only had a little Indian meal, the 
mock-hare would be actually scrapple — with that 
lovely golden brown colouring and crispness of taste 
which make scrapple one of the immortal contribu- 
tions of America to the world's gastronomic Wal- 
halla. Rank it with canvas-back duck and terrapin 
and buckwheat cakes and Little Neck clams and green 
com. But if it were not for the pinch of Indian 



58 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

meal, scrapple would not be scrapple. It would be 
mock-hare. 

I eat so much of this delectable dish and say so 
much about it that the Frau Inspektor is flattered 
deep down in her gracious soul. The Fraulein Emmi, 
one day, mysteriously presents me with a slip of gilt- 
edged paper on which she has written out the recipe 
for mock-hare, so that I shall be able to have some 
made for me in far-off America. 

" Though," says the Fraulein Emmi, " it ought 
to be cooked upon a range or stove." 

I blush slightly, knowing that she has in mind 
the wild, open forest life which I have described to 
Herr Otto — a life of roaring campfires rather than 
of decent kitchens. HoweveK^ I take the recipe with 
gratitude. The Fraulein Emmi reads English more 
or less ; and as a compliment to me, she has com- 
posed the recipe in that language, with the aid of 
a dictionary. I reproduce it here just as she wrote 
it on the sheet of gilt-edged paper: 



FOR THE FALSE HAIB 



350 gramm. beef — hacket 
350 gramm. porck — hacket 
1 little bread in Water gesoaket 
3 spoons other Bread pulverisirt 



BERLIN 59 

2 teaspoons pepper salt. 

1 onion fine hacket 

In fat to damp. All together stirr, and stick with Lard. 

It is delightful of a summer morning to wake and 
hear the notes of a bugle in the Thiergarten below 
one's window. Looking out, one sees a group of 
Uhlans riding between the strips of greenery, the 
little pennons fluttering from their lances, and their 
splendid horses moving all together. The perfect 
training of the German cavalry is wonderful. At a 
distance they seem like a row of lead soldiers, cast 
all in exactly the same mould. Each lance is held 
at precisely the same angle. Each rider has precisely 
the same seat upon his steed. Each horse, even, lifts 
his hoofs at precisely the same instant as each other 
horse. And when you see fifty thousand cavalry 
and infantry at some great review on the Tempel- 
hoferfeld, it is just the same. A column of a thou- 
sand men seems not to be composed of individuals. 
It might have been carved as a whole out of some 
blue and red material, and its movements are as 
regular as those of a machine. In fact, an intelli- 
gent machine is the ideal of the ruling German — 
not the highest possible ideal, but one of which the 



60 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

realisation is astonishing wherever you observe it — 
in the army, the police, the post-office, the univer- 
sities, or the imperial court. Perhaps, after a little, 
you weary of its mechanism. Spontaneity, indi- 
viduality, personality, have all been thrown into the 
hopper of a huge official mill, and have come out a 
finished product which lives and works and thinks 
according to a formula. 

It is the eternal presence of the German soldier 
that differentiates Berlin from an American city of 
its size ; for all else here is modern — the ornate 
palace of the Reichstag, the glorified Luna Park 
display of the Siegesallee, the brand-new Protestant 
cathedral or Domkirche, the avenue of the Linden 
itself, lined with ghttering shops and restaurants, 
the Leipzigerstrasse, crowded by trams and vans and 
bustling burghers. There is a brown-stone-front 
effect to the Schloss which recalls New York; and 
though the Schloss Bridge, with its statues over- 
looking the little river, is beautiful, it has not the 
effect of mellow age. To be sure, there are many 
places here which are redolent of history, but it is 
very modern history. One looks at the column in the 
Belle Alliance Platz, and it takes you no further 



BERLIN 61 

back than Waterloo. The building that nestles 
under a great Mansard roof and encompasses a 
garden in the Wilhelmstrasse gives you a thrill 
when you remember that in its offices the mighty 
Bismarck, with his Reichshund crouched beside him, 
created a great empire, and gave law to Continental 
Europe until the day when his " young master " 
sent an aide-de-camp to turn him out. But this was 
only a few years ago. We all remember it; and 
the Man of Blood and Iron might himself appear 
upon the steps without seeming like a visitant from 
another world. 

Yes, Berlin is very new — an infant among Euro- 
pean capitals — and even old Fritz upon his lumpy 
horse is not an ancient, since his end came only after 
we Americans had won our freedom. Compare the 
German capital with Paris or Vienna or Brussels, 
not to speak of Rome, and it seems almost as new 
as Cincinnati or Detroit. The distinctive and pic- 
torial interest of it comes first of all from the swarm- 
ing soldiery — from the bright helmets, spiked or 
plumed, the glitter of gold lace, the blue and crim- 
son uniforms, the white jack-boots, and the clank of 
sabres everywhere. A dozen times an hour you see 



62 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

some gorgeous warrior stiffen suddenly and salute, 
as he perceives another of his kind somewhere within 
the regulation distance. It is most attractive for a 
time; and the bugle of the Uhlans in the morning is 
but the overture, the thrilling note with which the 
martial drama of the day begins. 

Yet after a little while, the everlasting army officer 
gets upon your nerves. His lordly and all-conquering 
air, his supercilious pose, his assumption that he has 
the right of way, no matter where you meet him, his 
refusal to swerve a hair's breadth as he stalks along 
the broadest trottoir — somehow you feel that there 
is a great deal too much of him. And then you hear 
stories of his insolence to women, his bullying of civ- 
ilians, the grim tales of the barrack-yards where 
simple country boys are tortured by the drill-sergeant 
with inconceivable brutality, and now and then a 
darker and more sinister revelation of the moral 
rottenness which is festering like a plague-spot 
underneath the brave display of gorgeous uniforms 
and rigid ceremonial. It is not necessary to read 
such books as that of Bilse or such journals as the 
Zukunft. Any German can relate to you out of his 
own personal knowledge things as sickening as these. 



BERLIN 63 

And after that, the schneidig Offizier, as he swaggers 
by you on the Linden, nose in air, and regarding you 
with contempt, is not provocative of admiration. 

Here is where I recall the Adventure of the Herr 
Lieutenant. You must know that, staying tempo- 
rarily in Berlin and viewing it with scorn, is an 
American friend, whom I may, for the purpose of 
this narrative, call Bob — especially as that is what 
everybody calls him in his native land. Now Bob 
is a frank and free-spoken and energetic person with 
a sort of mental twist which leads him to condemn 
whatever is under his immediate eye, and to admire 
whatever is remote. At home he professes to believe 
that the great Republic is tottering to its fall. 
Everything American is either detestable, ridicu- 
lous, or worthless. They do it all so much better in 
Europe. But here, in Berlin, you should hear Bob 
blaze with patriotic ardour! America is God's coun- 
try, sure enough. As for Germany and the Germans 
— pah! Bob has a most wonderful vocabulary to 
which half a dozen languages have contributed, and his 
fluency is marvellous ; yet even he finds it difficult to 
relieve his burdened soul of all its pent-up feeling. 



64 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

And he is not in the least particular as to when 
and where he says the things that he desires to say. 
It is just a bit appalling to hear him, in the midst 
of the crowded Cafe Keck or the Oberbayrische 
Restaurant, express his candid views as to the Kaiser, 
the Crown Prince, the rest of the royal and imperial 
family, the German army, and the whole administra- 
tion of the Empire. His words come hot and pun- 
gent like a cataract of tabasco sauce. If any one 
else should utter half a dozen sentences such as these 
of Bob's, he would be swiftly haled before some be- 
dizened functionary and then laid by the heels in a 
dungeon for the crime of Majestdtsbeleidigimg. But 
Bob keeps right on, precisely as though he were in 
Brooklyn, and no one even warns him. It is just 
Bob's luck. 

Well, one evening, rather late, we are roaming in 
a somewhat lonely and ill-lighted section of the Alt- 
Moabit, when down the pavement comes, very haugh- 
tily, a young Herr Lieutenant of his Majesty's 
Brandenburgers. He is very blond and very trig, 
much pinched as to his waist, and padded as to his 
shoulders, and his strut makes it apparent, even from 
afar, that the earth and the fulness thereof are all 



BERLIN 65 

his. I can feel Bob fairly bristle as this young 
warrior heaves in sight. The sidewalk is reasonably 
wide and we give a full half of it to the Herr Lieu- 
tenant. But he has already set his course, and to 
swerve from it for the sake of two contemptible civ- 
ilians would be absurd and ignominious. The result 
is that he comes into violent collision with Bob. Now 
Bob had instantaneously perceived just what was 
going to happen and had braced himself for the im- 
pact of the Herr Lieutenant. Therefore, the Herr 
Lieutenant reels violently and almost falls into the 
roadway, his cap half shaken from his head and his 
sword getting awkwardly mixed up with his sky- 
blue legs. He pulls himself together fiercely. 

" Du ! Lump ! " snarls the Herr Lieutenant. 

" Schweinehund ! " flashes back Bob, like a rapid- 
fire gun. 

Now to call any German whatsoever a pig-dog is 
a very serious matter. But to apply that name to 
an officer in uniform, especially after you have 
knocked him all over the place, is an insult that can 
be washed out by blood alone. According to the 
unwritten code of his ^lajesty's army, the Herr Lieu- 
tenant must instantly draw and run Bob through 



m THE NEW BAEDEKER 

the body. His hand goes swiftly to his sword-hilt. 
But Bob is by no means slow. With the agility of a 
cat he leaps aside, and catches up what an American 
rustic would call a " rock." It is a fine, smooth, 
round cobblestone of about two pounds in weight, and 
Bob poises it deftly in his ready hand. 

" You slab-sided, spindle-shanked, waffle-j awed, 
pop-eyed son of a pink porcupine ! " cries Bob. " If 
you pull that tin sword of yours, I '11 mash your face 
into Blutwurstl " 

It may have been the effect of the moonlight, but 
I notice that the roseate cheeks of the Herr Lieuten- 
ant have suddenly turned to chalk. Perhaps he is 
appalled to find that the American language con- 
tains so many compound words. Doubtless on the 
field of battle, with his fellow-Brandenburgers, he 
would cheerfully rush forward to certain death amid 
the cannon-thunder. But up here in a dim corner 
of the Alt-Moabit, to have his face, his beautiful face, 
converted into Blutwurst by a " rock " at the hands 
of a foreign savage — there is no glory in it. And 
Bob has a very wicked look as he balances the cob- 
blestone in his nervous, muscular hand. 

There is a poignant silence for about two seconds. 



BERLIN 67 

Then the Herr Lieutenant adjusts his cap, endeav- 
ours to assume an air of high disdain, and stalks 
stiffly off into the night with muttered words, among 
which I can distinguish only " Barbarismus ! " 

Bob and I make our way to the hospitable shelter 
of the Herculesgarten, and there celebrate together, 
with many a stein, this signal victory of the United 
States over the German army. 

I wonder whether it is because the military caste 
is so exalted that the proletariat is so sordid and un- 
pleasant. One extreme is usually balanced by the 
other. At any rate, the rabble of Berlin is grosser 
and more offensive than that of any other northern 
capital — than in Paris or in London, for example, 
or in cosmopolitan New York. Intense poverty can- 
not rob the French of a certain artistic feeling, nor 
the English of a certain rough bonhomie, nor the 
Americans of a certain self-respect and orderliness. 
But a German crowd is like a herd of animals — 
coarse, rude, unmannerly, and yet quite servile in 
the presence of a uniform. To see them in their free 
moments, I take a little steamer which plies along the 
Spree from the Jannowitz Briicke in Berlin to Stra- 



68 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

lau an-d other pseudo-rustic places by the river — the 
German equivalents of Coney Island and Pleasure 
Bay and Nantasket. 

The boat is packed with puif -faced men and blowsy 
women and squalling children. On the little deck 
before the wheel-house I observe two girls, not ill- 
looking, and doubtless servant-maids out for a holi- 
day. They lean over the railing. Beneath them is 
the lower deck jammed with perspiring humanity, so 
close that not one can move from where he stands. 
A slow Teutonic smile begins to spread itself over 
the broad faces of the girls. Then they lean forward 
and begin, quite pleasantly, to spit down upon the 
passengers below them. They grin when the marks- 
manship is particularly good. Their human targets 
cannot possibly escape them. In any other country 
there would be a riot on the boat; but this is Ger- 
many, and the lower deck is much amused by the rich 
humour of the two DienstmddcJien, There are little 
squeals and there is much dodging, but no one seems 
to feel disgust. 

As you glide along the river you see, on either 
bank, beer-gardens, open-air restaurants, grotesque 
little hotels, and also open spaces where excursionists 



BERLIN 69 

may sit and eat and drink what they have brought 
with them in bottles and pails and baskets. It is not 
a holiday, yet it seems as though the entire popula- 
tion of Berlin were already swarming in the JJm- 
gehungen of the capital. Heavens ! What shoals 
of sardellen, what heaps of herring, what hills of 
hams, what mountains of sausages, and what conti- 
nents of smoked goose, cheese, sauerkraut, and pork, 
are being washed down with seas of beer and gluh- 
wein and other fearsome brews ! Surely Gargantua 
must have been a German. And when you reach 
Stralau you simply attain a climax for while there 
are tents containing sword-swallowers and bearded 
ladies and Circassian beauties (from Sanct Pauli at 
Hamburg) and a " Reptilien Ausstellung " you can 
scarcely notice them because you are distracted by the 
extraordinary capacity for guzzling which you see 
illustrated all about you. I used to think that the 
piles of " hot dogs " which disappear at Coney Island 
of a summer afternoon were staggering; but Stra- 
lau would engulf them in an hour, and then bellow 
for still more. There are also seventeen different 
kinds of music rending the atmosphere, and, oddly 
enough, most of it is in a minor key. If the Eng- 



70 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

lish take their pleasure sadly, these Germans surely 
take theirs dismally — one might say morbidly. 
For what is the ballad that is being sung by yon- 
der red-bearded baritone and most approved by 
those who stop between two bites of Wurst to 
listen? You may buy the words from the songster 
himself for the sum of two pfennig. " Schreck- 
liches Ende Einer Kindermorderin." Fancy — eat- 
ing, drinking, on pleasure bent in the open air and 
sunshine, and then topping off with a gruesome 
ditty which describes the shocking end of a child- 
murderess I 

Take a tram through the lovely Thiergarten, and 
visit Charlottenburg. Again, you will see very much 
the same sort of crowd. Most of them will not visit 
the pretty palace there, but will make straight for 
the mausoleum. When it is opened by the attendant, 
in rush the Volk. This is the final resting place of 
kings, a place where Prussian sovereigns lie in the 
dignity of death. I have watched American crowds 
at the tomb of Washington and at the sepulchre of 
General Grant, but never in either place have I seen 
a man who did not bare his head and speak in low- 
ered tones and move about with evident respect. Yet 



BERLIN 71 

many call us the most irreverent of peoples ! Watch 
these Germans squeezing, grunting, and snorting like 
so many swine around the royal tombs. If they were 
allowed to do so, they would camp upon the coffins 
and devour cheese and sausages in the very presence 
of the dead. 

No, the ruling military caste and the porcine pop- 
ulace are the upper and nether millstones between 
which the great body of the German people are held 
fast. The men of intellectual power, the men of 
affairs, the men who are the mainstay of the race 
must let the heel of militarism press their necks a 
little longer. They are upright, honourable, cour- 
teous and altogether right; but they must still bow 
low to degenerates like Kuno von Moltke, for ex- 
ample, just as the peasants and the very poor must 
sweat to pay the sums which a military State de- 
mands. And these last pay in blood and self-respect 
as well as in hard coin. Their women cannot be vir- 
tuous and still earn a living. During the Franco- 
Prussian War, how the American and English pulpits 
rang with moral lessons ! The French were wor- 
shippers of the great goddess Lubricity, and there- 
fore they were humbled. The Prussians were God- 



72 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

fearing, temperate, and pure, and so they were 
exalted. 

I should like to have these sermonisers walk with 
me through the most respectable quarters of Berlin. 
In Paris, vice is kept strictly within bounds by the 
agents des moeurs. The smaller French cities are 
not merely decorous but dull. While Berlin — ! 
Stroll through the beautiful arcade, the Passage 
which runs from the Linden to the Friedrichstrasse, 
and you will see effigies and pictures and mechanical 
toys such as might have been designed for Elagab- 
alus. There they are, exposed to everybody's view 
as openly as though they were Teddy-bears or 
Noah's arks. One cannot venture to describe them. 
They surpass the worst things in that Neapolitan 
collection to which no priest or woman is admitted. 
And what is supremely detestable in German pruri- 
ency is its utter grossness. The Frenchman at his 
lowest lets his wit play around the lupanar. The 
German at his lowest draws his inspiration from the 
latrine and the sewer. 

Berlin boasts that it has no maisons tolerees. 
What need, when almost every Wirstshaus, almost 
every LoJcal, and almost every cafe swarm with 



6o5 








12/13 Kronenstr.i2/l3 



Strohwittwer- 

Heim 






Ausschank 

von echtem 

HliQClieDep und hiesigen Lagerbier. 



"-i—j- — 



Internationale Bedienung. 



-^^ 



Fremden und Hiesigen bestens 
empfohlen. 

A. Pfeffer. 

Prnck Ton 0. Haeodoru. Leipn^erstr. 126 

The "Strohwittwer-Heim" 



BERLIN 73 

women who thrust themselves upon you with the slow 
smile that all over the world has but a single mean- 
ing? Crude printed handbills in red or blue an- 
nounce the Tingelt angel or the Schwalben-Nest or 
what you please as being a Strohwittwer Heim with 
Fesche Bedienung or Internationale Bedienung, The 
whole city teems with meretricious lures. It is the 
garrison taint, the inevitable concomitant of that 
social order under which marriage is made impossible 
by the obligations of military service. Napoleon's 
armies shook German feudalism to pieces; for even 
in Napoleon's despite, they spread everywhere a love 
of nationality and a knowledge of the rights of man. 
The restless days of 1848 gave to Prussia the sem- 
blance of constitutionalism. But Bismarck's three 
successful wars, while they did create an Empire, 
made it an Empire of brute force and of brutal rule. 
Only a great military disaster can now hurl this down 
and leave the true German people free to build again, 
and at last to have a country that is not a camp. 

Some day, if God is very good to me, I shall be 
sitting at my window in the Pariser Platz and look- 
ing out across the Thiergarten toward Charlotten- 



74 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

burg. But there will be no Uhlans and no bugle 
calls. A strange hush will have fallen on Berlin. 
Shutters will be closed and curtains drawn along the 
Linden, and the whole great avenue will be as still 
as death. At the Brandenburger Thor a few 
mounted officers of the police in their dark uniforms 
will be sitting their horses, immobile and gloomy. 

As I gaze with intense expectancy across the sea 
of green, there comes an impalpably faint murmur, 
like the far-away sound of surf upon the shore. It 
grows and swells, and then it deepens into a sort of 
muffled thunder pierced by the roll of distant drums. 
The murmur becomes a surging symphony. The 
clear call of trumpets cuts it with a shrilling blare 
of triumph. Now I can see the glint of sun on steel. 
Down one of the broad allees there gallop half a 
hundred horsemen who draw rein beside the Branden- 
burger Thor. Then, of a sudden, comes a great 
flood of splendid cavalry, with glittering corselets, 
regiment upon regiment of cuirassiers, who have at 
last avenged the red ruin of their glorious debacle at 
Gravelotte. On they ride, not with the stolid, surly 
mien of Prussians, nor with the mechanical perfec- 
tion of the toy soldiers of the Tempelhoferfeld, but 



BERLIN 75 

swinging lightly in their saddles, their faces radiant 
with that joyous daring which belongs to the most 
war-loving nation in the world. 

But now they have massed themselves about the 
Thor. Far as the eye can reach are regiments of 
sturdy infantry filling the whole vast area of the 
Thiergarten. Before them, surrounded by a bril- 
liant staif , rides a general whose name is now perhaps 
unknown to Europe and the world, but who on that 
day will be the greatest man on earth. As he nears 
the Thor, the glorious tricolour Is unfurled, sur- 
mounted it may be — for who can tell — by the 
Napoleonic eagle. And then, following the rising 
thunder of a thousand drums, there bursts forth a 
crash of music — thrilling, maddening, divine. I 
feel the words that are behind: 

Amour sacre de la patrie, 
Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs — 
Liberie, Liberte cherie, 
Combats avec tes defensem-s ! 
Sous nos drapeux que la Victoire 

Accoure a tes males accents; 
Que nos ennemis expirants 

Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire ! 

Aux armes, citoyens ! Formez vos bataillons ! 
Marchons ! Qu'un sapg impur abreuve nos sillons ! 



76 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

And as the music swells and billows into a tempest 
of martial melody, rolling up the Linden and flooding 
it with a glorious sea of sound, I, at my window, 
shall lean far out and cry aloud with an infinite 
exultation — 

" Vive la France ! " 



IV 

ROME 

When you glide into the railway station which re- 
ceives those who travel from Florence to Rome, per- 
haps you ought not to expect anything different 
from what you actually find. Rome ! The very name 
recalls mailed legions, and splendid palaces, and the 
riches of a world cast into the lap of its triumphant 
mistress. But you alight from your railway car- 
riage and see only the bare, grey walls and platforms 
of a very French-looking gare, with a few facchmi 
waiting to take your luggage, and several hersa- 
glieri and other Italian warriors, wearing absurd 
cocks' feathers in their caps. Is this really the Rome 
of your dreams, the Rome of Scaurus and Pompey 
and Csesar and Cicero and Catiline — the Rome of 
Gregory the Great, the Rome of Rienzi? 

A traveller is almost always foolish enough to 
generalise from a railway-station, even though he 
knows that all railway-stations from Utica, New 
York, to far-off Benares in India, are quite apart 



78 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

from the places to which they belong. And to gen- 
eralise about Rome of all cities, after spending five 
minutes in its cheerless sta^ionel The late Pope 
Leo XIII. — that sagacious, urbane, and learned 
pontiif — had a series of little formulas which he 
used to employ when meeting strangers. They are 
replete with a vast amount of practical wisdom. 

" How long have you been in Rome ? " Pope Leo 
was wont to ask. 

Perhaps the person would answer: 

" A week, your Holiness." 

" Ah, then you must feel as though you know 
Rome very well ! " 

If the visitor said that he had been in Rome for 
six months, his Holiness would reply: 

" Then you have begun to look about you a little 
bit." 

But if the visitor happened to say that he had 
lived in Rome for several years and intended living 
there for several more, then the Pope would smile 
benignantly and remark: 

" Ah, then you have discovered that even a whole 
lifetime is not too long to teach you what Rome really 
is!" 



ROME 79 

I had n't heard of Pope Leo's views when I reached 
the outside station late one October afternoon, and 
I felt the weariness of travel and the chilHness of an 
atmosphere which went to my very bones. So I was 
cross and disappointed and caused myself to be 
driven swiftly to a very good hotel in the Via del 
Babuino near the Piazza del Popolo and the Pincian. 
Inducted into a handsome room, I still shivered with 
the cold. Even the gorgeous hotel porter, and the 
wilhng attendants, and the coming dinner and the 
subconsciousness of Rome itself could not dispel the 
chill. New York in January may be actually colder, 
but Rome in October makes you feel the coldness more. 
There was a fireplace under the mantel; so I rang, 
and when a servant came, I clamoured for a fire. The 
order was accepted with a deep bow of acquiescence, 
but I could see that somehow or other I had acted 
rashly. 

Presently there entered a very pretty maid bring- 
ing sundry little sticks of wood and carrying them 
somewhat as a young priestess of Juno might carry 
the sacred emblems of that goddess in a procession. 
She laid them down reverently by the fireplace. 
There were thirteen of these little sticks, and each 



80 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

one looked as though it had been carefully washed and 
pumice-stoned. Elena, for such was the maiden's 
name, produced a few shavings and with much care 
ignited three of the sticks. They made a fitful and 
uncertain blaze in the large fireplace. The sight of 
them only intensified the surrounding area of cold. 
I said: 

" Put on some more wood, please." 

Elena looked grieved and rather startled as she 
added three more twigs to those which were already 
flickering. Thereupon, I seized the rest of the 
bundle and threw it all on at once. Elena gasped. 

" Oh, but the wood, the precious wood ! " she cried. 

Then it was obvious that wood in Rome is not to 
be taken lightly. I thought of the vast opulent 
stretches of American woodland where any one can 
go and gather at will great seasoned logs and beauti- , 
ful broad chips and unlimited hemlock and spruce, 
and pine cones, and build huge roaring fires by the 
seashore or in the clearings in the forests — all this 
the free gift of sylvan nature in our still undimin- 
ished stores. But to Elena a few small sticks were 
very precious. They had been gathered with care 
and sold at a price and were not to be burned save 



ROME 81 

one by one, and then chiefly for display. I was 
sorry for Elena, but I demanded more wood, and still 
more ; and I had a lovely blazing fire which lighted 
the whole room with its glorious flame, until there 
was no more cold and I felt that, after all, life was 
well worth living. The charge for all this wood was 
fifteen cents, which, when you put it into centesimi, 
looks formidable in a hotel bill and in the eyes of 
Elena, but which does not greatly deplete your letter 
of credit. 

It was probably all wrong that, after being 
warmed and amply fed, I did not take an evening 
stroll down through the Piazza di Spagna and thence 
to some part of the Rome that existed in the days of 
the early emperors. I meant to do so ; but, saunter- 
ing along the Via del Babuino, I chanced upon a 
building all aflare with gaslight amid which flamed 
the letters Varieta. Of course it was a cafe-concerto, 
and why should not one spend his first evening in 
Rome there rather than in contemplating some arch 
or ruin in the chilly moonlight? The cafe-concerto 
looked warm and bright ; and I was pretty sure that 
Horace would have entered it precisely as he used 
to prowl around the Forum and down in the Su- 



82 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

burra, watching the bunco-steerers and jugglers and 
sausage vendors of his generation. In fact, when- 
ever I want to enjoy myself in an unconventional 
way, I always pacify my conscience by saying that 
this is just what Horace would have done. Dulce 
est desipere in loco is really one of his greatest lines, 
and it leaves you to decide for yourself whether any 
particular place is the sort of locus that he had in 
mind. 

The hall which I now entered had a stage at one 
end, approached by a broad aisle. On each side of 
the aisle, and facing it, were long rows of tables, or 
rather slabs, with chairs behind them, by means of 
one of which I secured a seat. On the stage a most 
interesting performance was going on. Two gentle- 
men in evening dress were doing things. One would 
apply a match to the other's nose, whereupon the 
nose would immediately glow bright red and the 
match would be ignited. I am sure that Horace 
would have been amused by this. Then the gentle- 
men proceeded to other feats which I was beginning 
to enjoy, when all of a sudden a soft voice at my 
left, emanating from a hocca Romana, said with well- 
bred languor: 



ROME 83 



6i 



Giulia, I am sure that the Signor would be glad 
to offer you some slight refreshment." 

I turned around and there was a very daintily 
dressed lady, with beautiful white hair, looking at 
me, but speaking to her daughter who was equally 
well attired and who had the face of a Cloelia or a 
Clodia. I was struck by the friendliness of the Ro- 
mans and the ease with which they make a stranger 
feel at home. A ready waiter appeared and pres- 
ently brought to the Signorina Giulia some liquid 
trifle in a tiny glass. By this time, the gentlemen 
on the stage were surpassing themselves ; but I had 
no sooner resumed the thread of their performance 
than the white-haired lady once more spoke. She 
hinted that refreshment of a more solid character 
would be conducive to the health of Giulia. Not to 
make too long a story of it, both the ladies were 
ere long consuming a terrine of pate de foie gras, 
long rolls of delicious looking bread, coffee in tall 
glasses, various Italian cheeses, luscious looking 
grapes, a salad rather highly flavoured with garlic, 
and sundry other things of which the memory 
escapes me. 

Presently their appetite seemed more remarkable 



84 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

to me than anything which was happening on the 
little stage. I wondered whether they were going to 
finish before midnight. But they did so ; and then 
the white-haired lady rose and thanked me most mellif- 
luously with the remark that they would both be 
charmed to have me call upon them, not thinking it 
necessary, however, to give me an address. Then 
they glided gracefully out through the blue cigarette 
smoke of the now crowded hall, while I settled with 
the waiter and reflected once more on the genial 
friendliness of the Romans. When I went back to 
my hotel I had a comfortable sort of feeling that I 
had acquaintances in Rome. The chilliness of my 
first impression had been entirely removed. 

Looking back over my reminiscences I must say 
that this sort of friendliness was very general. For 
example, down in the Piazza di Venezia, strolling 
pleasantly in the noonday sunlight, I encountered a 
contadina dressed in many colours and engaged in 
selling flowers. One day I bought some and paid 
for them with a lira, having no smaller change at 
hand and not thinking that eighteen cents was an 
excessive price for a cluster of roses which on Fifth 
Avenue would have cost three dollars. But this large 



ROME 85 

sum made an immense impression on the mind of 
Lucia, which was the name of the flower-girl. The 
next day, on my stroll, I found her reinforced by six 
others of her profession, all of them buried in 
blooms and insisting that I should buy of them. It 
seemed a pity to disappoint so many Romans all at 
once, especially as I was trying to get a real under- 
standing of the city after the notion of Pope Leo. 
So I bought seven bunches of flowers, though with 
copper instead of silver, and then fondly imagined 
that the incident was closed. Great was my surprise, 
therefore, on the following day, when I found the 
Piazza di Venezia filled with flower-girls, all of whom 
received me with a chorus of liquid Italian. I was 
much embarrassed; and when they approached I 
took refuge in a book-shop, the proprietor of which 
a little later allowed me to escape through one of 
those mysterious back-doors which every Roman 
house possesses and by which you can go through a 
whole maze of streets until your pursuers have lost 
you, and you have lost yourself. 

But Rome — ancient, mediaeval, and modem all 
in one — who shall write of it.^* Who shall give any 



86 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

adequate conception of that wonderful place in which 
the old and the new are so inextricably interwoven? 
There is the Black Stone which Romulus may have 
touched ; and there is the gigantic memorial to Victor 
Emmanuel which is still unfinished. There is not 
a nook or a corner which, if you know just what it 
means, can be passed by unheeded. Strangely 
enough, though this is the capital of the greatest 
Church in Christendom, the ecclesiastical phase of it 
makes the least impression. St. Peter's, for example, 
is one of the most remarkable structures in the world, 
and yet somehow I cannot think of it save as a show- 
place. Its colonnades, the leaping fountains in front 
of it, the marvellous statuary, the vast interior where 
men and women at one end seem mere pygmies to 
those who view them from the other — all this mag- 
nificence and hugeness do not kindle a spark in my 
imagination. 

Go into the Sistine Chapel and hear the eunuch 
choir sing their strangely sweet unearthly music, and 
still you will feel that it is all a show. You are not 
bowed down in spirit as you are when you face the 
Gothic majesty of the cathedral at Cologne. At 
St. Peter's you consult your guide-book and walk 




• 1— ( 
-C5 



o 
o 



an 



(/: 



ROME 87 

about and chatter. At Cologne you are in the very 
presence of God Himself and your tongue cleaves to 
the roof of your mouth, and a sense of your infinite 
littleness and weakness and human frailty comes over 
you and bids you to be silent amid this scene of awe. 
And yet one can partly understand what St. 
Peter's means, not only to the faithful, but to many 
for whom its interest is only artistic and historical. 
Clive Newcome expressed it all in the letter that he 
wrote when he was living in the Via Gregoriana and 
which is one of the most famous and worst written 
passages in Thackeray. 

Of course our first pilgrimage was to St. Peter's. What a walk ! 
Under what noble shadows does one pass ! At every turn there is a 
temple; in every court a brawling fountain. . . . You pass through 
an avenue of angels and saints on the bridge across Tiber, all in 
action ; their great wings seem clanking, their marble garments clap- 
ping. St. Michael, descending upon the Fiend, has been caught and 
bronzified just as he Kghted on the Castle of St. Angelo. ... I think 
I have lost sight of St. Peter's, have n't I ? How it makes your heart 
beat when you first see it ! Ours did as we came in at m'ght from 
Civita Vecchia, and saw a great ghostly darkling dome rising solemnly 
up into the grey night, and keeping us company even so long as we 
drove, as if it had been an orb fallen out of heaven with its light put 
out. As you look at it from the Pincio, and the sun sets behind it, 
siu'ely that aspect of earth and sky is one of the grandest in the 
world. I don't like to say that the fa9ade of the church is ugly and 
obtrusive. As long as the dome overawes, that fa9ade is supportable. 



88 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

You advance toward it — through, O, such a noble court! with 
fountains flashing up to meet the sunbeams; and right and left of 
you, two sweeping half-crescents of great colmnns; but you pass by 
the courtiers and up to the steps of the throne, and the dome seems 
to disappear behind it. It is as if the throne was upset, and the 
king had toppled over. 

There must be moments, in Rome especially, when every man of 
friendly heart, who writes himself Enghsh and Protestant, must feel 
a pang at thinking that he and his countrymen are insulated from 
European Christendom. An ocean separates us. From one shore 
or the other one can see the neighbour cliffs on clear days: one 
must wish sometimes that there were no stormy gulf between us; 
and from Canterbury to Rome a pilgrim could pass, and not drown 
beyond Dover. Of the beautiful parts of the great Mother Church I 
believe among us many people have no idea ; we think of lazy friars, 
of pining cloistered virgins, of ignorant peasants worshipping wood 
and stones, of bought and sold indulgences, -absolutions, and the hke 
conunonplaces of Protestant satire. Lo ! yonder inscription, which 
blazes round the dome of the temple, so great and glorious it looks 
like heaven almost, and as if the words were written in stars, it pro- 
claims to all the world, that this is Peter, and on this rock the Church 
shall be built, against which Hell shall not prevail. Under the bronze 
canopy his throne is lit with lights that have been burning before it 
for ages. 

Thus Thackeray, speaking through CHve New- 
come. But, as for me, I must confess to a greater 
sympathy with what Mr. Arthur Symonds has 
written down in his book called Cities, 

*'To see St. Peter's is to reahse all that is strongest, most Roman, 
nothing that is subtle or spiritual, in the power of the Church. 
This vast building, the largest small church in the world, imposes 



ROME 89 

itself upon you wherever you are in Rome; you see the dome from 
the Alban or the Sabine Hills, from which the whole city seems 
dwindled to a white shadow upon a green plain. . . . And always, 
by day, looked at from witliin or without, it is by its immensity, its 
spectacular qualities, that it is impressive. . . . And St. Peter's, 
impressing you as it certainly does, with its tremendous size, strength, 
wealth, and the tireless, enduring power which has called it into 
being, holds you at a distance, with the true ecclesiastical frigidity. 
You learn here how to distinguish between what is emotional and 
what is properly ecclesiastical in the CathoUc Church. St. Peter's 
is entirely positive, dogmatic, the assertion of the supremacy of the 
Church over the world." 

That is to say, St. Peter's is in reality sugges- 
tive of temporal rather than of spiritual power. 
So it has always seemed to me, and so it doubtless 
seems to millions who behold it and wonder at it, 
but are never touched or moved by it in their secret 
souls. For my part, I am a little out of patience with 
papal Rome yet have no great sympathy with those 
who find fault with what they call the " modernis- 
ing " of the city since it became the capital of Modern 
Italy. 

Thus an English archaeologist, in the preface of 
a work on the remains of ancient Rome, complains 
very bitterly of the changes which the last twenty 
years have brought about in the appearance of the 
Eternal City. The burden of his lament is one to 



90 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

which many other scholars and artists often give a 
similar expression. He speaks of the obliteration 
of many of the ancient gardens that diversified the 
city's dingy brown with clusters of greenery ; of the 
uprooting of avenues of ilex; of the conversion of 
the beautiful prati into " a hideous waste of bricks 
and mortar " ; of the rebuilding of the picturesque 
old lanes into " j erry-built stuccoed boulevards " ; 
of the demolition of the Ghetto ; and of all the other 
changes which have brought it to pass that, as Pro- 
fessor Lanciani says, " Rome is no more the Rome 
of our dreams, of a beautiful brownish hue, sur- 
rounded by a dense mass of foliage ; but an immense 
white dazzling spot, some six miles in diameter, bor- 
dering directly on the wilderness of the Campagna." 
No one who has any sympathy with the spirit of 
antiquity or any love for the beautiful in nature and 
in art, can fail to share the feeling of regret which 
these distinguished scholars have clothed in language 
so expressive. Yet it sometimes appears to me that 
sufficient note has not been taken of the other side 
of this interesting question. In contemplating what 
has been lost we often forget to think of all that has 
been gained. From both the archaeological and the 



ROME 91 

aesthetic point of view, the new Rome does, after all, 
far more fully satisfy one's ideas than the Rome 
that has lately passed away. 

It is not at all necessary to put forward one plea 
that is very often made to excuse the sweeping 
changes — the plea that Rome is now the capital of 
United Italy and has thus come under the direct in- 
fluence of the modem spirit ; that the rapid growth 
of its population has enormously increased the de- 
mand for building space and consequently the value 
of the land ; and that its new prosperity and wealth 
have necessarily substituted modern comfort for 
mediaeval squalor. These facts may be taken for 
granted as an explanation of the changes ; but they 
ought not to be put forth apologetically. That 
Rome is still a living city rather than a sepulchre 
is not a subject for apology; nor is it, I think, a 
subject for regret. 

- In speaking of the alterations that have been made 
in the appearance of the city, it is curious to note 
how the word " modern " is almost always used as 
though it suggested barbarism worthy of the Van- 
dals ; while " mediaeval " connotes a spirit of rever- 
ence for classical antiquity and of sympathy with the 



92 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

beautiful in art. One archasologist deplores the fact 
that Rome is now a " modern " capital ; that the 
" modem " builder is everywhere at work. Another 
takes up the tale and laments the obliteration of so 
many of the " mediaeval " remains. A person igno- 
rant of the truth would suppose that only in these 
" modern " days has ancient Rome been rudely 
touched. He would never dream that it was in the 
centuries of mediaevalism that Imperial Rome was in 
reality blotted out, and that only in very modern 
times has its partial restoration been accomplished. 

As a matter of fact, the Rome of classical tra- 
dition remained practically unchanged down to the 
seventh century, the last renewal of its magnificence 
having been that of King Theodoric, the Ostrogoth. 
It was then still a splendid city, in spite of the trans- 
fer by Constantine of thousands of its artistic mas- 
terpieces to Byzantium; and in spite of the injury 
it had received from the fanaticism of the Christians 
and the greed of the Goths. Its wonderful temples, 
palaces, and shrines were still intact, and there still 
remained bewildering treasures of art in marble and 
bronze and gold and silver. It was not until the 
eighth century that the spirit of mediaevalism de- 



ROME 93 

scended upon Rome and " the long agony of seven 
hundred years " began. 

It was then only that its stately piles of majestic 
architecture were degraded into quarries from which 
any one might steal material for building; that the 
costly marbles with their historic inscriptions were 
pitched into kilns to be burned for hme; and that, 
from the scarcity of metal, the exquisite bronzes that 
beautified the city were melted into junk. The medi- 
aeval nobles turned even mausoleums into fortresses; 
and when besieged, they hurled down upon the be- 
siegers' heads the priceless sculptures of Grecian 
masters whose surviving works could not to-day be 
purchased for their weight in diamonds. Still other 
treasures of art seem to have been mutilated in sheer 
wantonness, like the famous Famese Hercules, of 
which the body was found in the ruins of the Baths 
of Caracalla and the legs in a well more than a mile 
away. The marvellous Colosseum was turned into 
a woollen factory. 

Finally, the medisevals did their very worst. The 
most famous sites of the ancient city were covered 
by rude towers and fortress-walls, the old streets 
were closed, and many of them were buried, like the 



91 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

Forum, under forty feet of accumulated rubbish. 
This is what medisevalism did for ancient Rome, 
justifying that famous and thoroughly truthful re- 
proach, Quod non fecerunt harhari, fecerunt Bar- 
berini. Those who deplore the demolition of the 
slimy Ghetto should bear in mind that as late as 1536 
one Pope (Paul III.)? in making a single street, de- 
molished two hundred houses on the north side of 
the Capitol; while down to the beginning of the 
present century the Forum Romanum, to-day the 
most interesting relic of ancient Rome, was allowed 
to remain a dismal waste, the feeding-place of buffa- 
loes, and waiting for the despised " modern " ex- 
plorer reverently to reveal its past magnificence. 

It is only a century since the splendid triumphal 
arch of Septimius Severus was disinterred. It is 
only about ninety years since the Column of Phocas 
was exhumed. It is less than that since the buildings 
of the Clivus Capitolinus were rescued from the rub- 
bish of mediaevalism. It is scarcely three decades since 
Fiorelli excavated the temples of Vesta, Castor, 
Caesar and the Basilica. I do not see how any one 
can justly speak of the Philistinism of modern Rome, 
where not a scrap of pottery or a bit of metal or a 



ROME 95 

scratching on a wall is anywhere discovered without 
immediately passing under the almost painful scru- 
tiny of a dozen archaeologists, to be preserved for- 
ever among the choicest treasures of civilisation. 

But it is not only on the archseological side that 
the growth and development of the new Rome have 
done so much for classical learning and for the better 
knowledge of ancient art. To one who has a proper 
sense of the eternal fitness of things the great capital 
will to-day speak far more distinctly of its historic 
past than if it had remained a mediaeval city of the 
dead. For an archaeologist to ask that the filthiest 
plague spots of the Middle Ages should remain un- 
touched to threaten the lives of half a million people, 
in order to gratify his conception of the picturesque, 
and that thousands should be poisoned to make an 
antiquarian holiday, is not merely an evidence of the 
distorted vision that so often afflicts the narrow 
specialist; it is also a distinct aesthetic mistake. 

The whole spirit of ancient Rome, its keynote, its 
ultimate expression, was strength, just as the spirit 
of ancient Greece found its supreme expression in 
beauty. That Rome to-day should not be a decaying 
and desolate waste surrounding a mass of half- 



96 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

obliterated ruins, but rather a mighty capital with 
its pulses full of life, and becoming every day 
stronger and m©re magnificent, is surely quite in 
accordance with the spirit of its history. In fact, 
Rome as it is now conveys to the sympathetic mind 
with almost startling force the lesson of its past by 
the very fact of the splendour and promise of its 
present. Its ancient remains are not isolated and 
melancholy reminders of a grandeur that is gone. 
They are evidences of its enduring power. By link- 
ing the present with the past, by making themselves 
an inseparable portion of the future, they typify the 
manner in which the Rome of classical antiquity has 
kept its hold unshaken upon the life and thought of 
modern times. 

In Rome the new and the old are wonderfully 
blended. Its temples are the same grand temples 
of the ancient gods. The aqueducts of Agrippa and 
of Quintus Marcius still supply the modern city. 
The great Via Flaminia is no grass-grown cow-path, 
but the Corso, one of the most brilliant avenues in 
Europe. The obelisks brought by the emperors from 
Egypt, the columns of Trajan and Antoninus, the 
arches of Titus and Severus and Constantine, still 



ROME 97 

ornament the squares. Its government is still that 
of quaestors and aediles, and their proclamations still 
begin with the historic letters S. P. Q. R. The Capi- 



Roma 1899 Num. d'Ordine U55 

s. P. Q. R. 



IPOGEO DEGLI SCIPIONI 
E COLOMBARIO DI POMPONIO HYLAS 



BIGLIETTO D'INGRESSO 
CENTESIMI VENTICINQVE 



"the historic letters, b. p. q. r." 
tol still exhibits the statue of Triumphant Rome; 
while on its front, in a den half covered with vines 
and tangled shrubbery, a she-wolf, the symbol of 
the city of Romulus, still paces restlessly up and 
down. 

It is precisely this wonderful union of the present 
with the past in the very midst of so many evidences 
of power and splendour, and promising a no less 
magnificent future, that gives to the beholder so 
vivid an insight into the true meaning of all that 
Rome has been. When you stand on the Capitol, 
wdth perhaps the early twilight just softening down 



98 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

any obtrusive contrasts, the memorials of antiquity 
on every side gain a new significance from the distant 
hum of the great city that surrounds you ; and you 
must be insensible indeed if you do not see in all its 
evidences of enduring life, the true meaning of its 
proud title, Urbs Sempiterna, 

I was thinking of these things one afternoon, as 
I basked in the sun on the edge of what some persons 
believe to have been the Tarpeian Rock. It is a 
good place for meditation. I had quite lost myself 
in the remote past, when the ingratiating voice of 
youth glided into my reveries. 

" Will the most illustrious signor condescend to 
look upon a few objects of art? " 

I rolled over sleepily, and there was an Italian boy 
of the sort you see in paintings. Olive skin, dark 
hair, large lambent eyes, and a face of apparent 
innocence and profound respect. He had beside him 
a covered basket, and he repeated the words: 

" Will the most illustrious signor condescend to 
look upon a few objects of art? " 

Now I am not the least bit illustrious, and what 
is more, I know it. Likewise, the young Italian most 



ROME 99 

certainly knew it. Nevertheless, there is something 
rather pleasing in being greeted in this way. It 
appeals to a certain human weakness which most of 
us possess. So I pulled myself together and tried 
to look illustrious, which was not very easy for one 
wearing an old Norfolk jacket and a pair of rather 
muddy, thick-soled English shoes. 

The boy removed the cover from his basket and 
drew out a long wooden rosary, fit for a Capuchin 
monk. Every bead was the size of a pigeon's Ggg, 
I could have whittled one out myself with a knife, 
although I am not very good at whittling. 

" Would your Excellency not like to possess this 
fine rosary carved by hand? His Holiness himself 
has blessed it." 

I was already hypnotised; and after the young 
Italian had purred a few more sentences I had be- 
come the possessor of the rosary while he had re- 
ceived ten lire in a gold piece, which he bit with his 
beautiful white teeth that gleamed between his scarlet 
lips. He had other things to show me. 

" See, Prince," said he, " here are smaller but still 
finer things." 

I could n't quite resist being mistaken for a prince. 



100 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

When he produced some corals I bought them, and 
likewise sundry cameos, and a quantity of Venetian 
beads. 

" Ah," said he, " any one could tell that your 
Highness is a lover of true art." 

After that I bought the rest of the things that 
were in his basket; but even as I did so I felt that 
I was not entirely wise. So, after he had bestowed 
upon me other titles and had expressed his thanks 
and his appreciation of my artistic taste, I stuffed 
my purchases into various pockets and returned to 
my hotel. It was the last day of my sojourn in Rome 
and I had to pack. When I looked at my objects of 
art I could n't help seeing that they were merely junk 
— the huge wooden rosary, the corals which were 
obviously of celluloid, the cameos with their brass 
pins, and all the rest of them. To pack them and 
carry them around would have made them a per- 
petual reminder of how the puer delicatus had taken 
me in so easily. Simply to leave them on the floor 
would have led the valet de chamhre to guess my 
story. Suddenly an evil thought occurred to me. 

The bed had been made up afresh for the next guest 
by the dainty hands of Elena. I cautiously turned 



ROME 101 

down the covers and artfully inserted the rosary, 
the corals, the cameos and the Venetian beads in the 
inner part of the couch, and then replaced the cover- 
ing and smoothed it out so that nobody would know. 
When I left the Eternal City that evening on the 
night express, it was in the hope that some English- 
man would occupy my room. I thought of his sen- 
sations as he projected himself down into that bed, 
where the rosary would have the effect of a large 
snake, and where the brass pins of the cameos would 
surely scratch his legs. 

Pondering on this picture, I leaned back against 
the stuffed cushions of a railway carriage and de- 
parted from the Eternal City with a panoramic 
vision of palaces, museums and obelisks, of the shirred 
eggs at the Caffe Nazionale, of the gentleman who lit 
matches on his companion's nose, and last of all of 
the hypothetical Englishman who was to become a sec- 
ond Laocoon in my room at the Hotel de Russie. If 
he reads these pages, I hope that he will write to me 
and tell me what he thought about it. 



102 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

ROMA RECENTIORUM 

Strange blending of the old and new, 

Of all that men have thought and done, 
The right, the wrong, the false, the true, 
The past, the present, all in one. 

Here sleep the mighty pagan dead 

Where now stands forth the crucifer, 
And many a temple rears its head 
To tell of Christ and Jupiter. 

Wliere once, before the naked Gaul, 

Rome's infant power swayed and shook, 
Here on the stately Capitol 

Now swarm the hordes of Mr. Cook; 
Wnhile, gazing down the Sacred Way 

By hoary Vesta's ruined wall. 
The cockney tourist chirps to-day 
His ditty of the music-hall. 

Where Claudia mocked the rabble rout 
And laughed its helpless rage to see, 

Now giggles as she flits about 

Some cheerful chit from Tennessee; 



EOME 103 

And where great Caesar passed in state 
And where Catullus kept his tryst. 

Now potters with uncertain gait 
The blear-eyed archaeologist. 

Here, too, one time, the pallid nuns 

Called on the saints with timorous trust, 
While from the hills the ape-faced Huns 
Grinned with the joy of blood and lust. 
Now, though the Roman maids no more 

The fierce barbaric host expect. 
Their hapless city quails before 
The modem Hun — the architect. 

Builder and tourist, Hun and Gaul, 

Like flies in some stupendous dome, 
Flit harmless by ; not one nor all 
Can mar thy maj esty, O Rome ! 

They come, they go, they pass away. 

While still undimmed thy splendours shine; 
To them belongs the fleeting day, 
But all the centuries are thine. 

To see at dawn the hills of Rome 
Ablaze with gold and amethyst; 



104 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

To watch Saint Peter's distant dome 
Swim in the evening's silver mist — 
This draws aside a curtain vast, 

And, as the kingly dead appear, 
The murmuring pulses of the past 
Reveal the heart of History here; 

For Age transmuted into Youth 

Dwells on this consecrated spot; 
Here speaks from God the voice of Truth, 
Here dwells the Faith that changes not. 
The world's desire, the nations' dower. 

Find here their one eternal home — 

Glory and grace and deathless power, 

Blent in the mighty name of Rome! 



RO¥EN 

" Paris is France." This is one of those sayings 
which are oftentimes repeated, but which long ago 
ceased to have a particle of truth in them. Paris 
is no longer France. It is only a huge cara- 
vanserai, maintained, to be sure, by cynical and 
greedy French, both male and female, yet for the 
benefit or the detriment of all the world save France 
itself. The Second Empire, with Baron Haussmann 
as its instrument, shattered the older Paris which be- 
longed to history, and siibstituted in its place a glit- 
tering and somewhat gaudy creation, meretricious, 
unsubstantial and unmeaning. Compared with any 
of the old French cities, Paris then became what a 
brand-new garish modem hotel is, when compared 
with a quiet, restful, well-appointed home. And 
since the Empire fell, its gilt has slowly worn away. 
A certain cheapness pervades the whole. It is the 
bouge of all the world. 

What do you see in Paris? Swarms of half- 



106 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

educated and nasal-voiced Americans, commercial * 
travellers or millionaires, Cook's tourists and queer 
Englishwomen, Greeks, Turks, negroes, Russians, — 
some of them bent on purchasing articles de Paris, 
and others wallowing in the mire of a studied and cold- 
blooded lubricity. Nothing is so disheartening, so 
depressing, so pathetic, as a lengthy stay in Paris. 
It is like watching, day by day, a sluggish snake 
unwind its fetid coils ; for, like a snake, its grace 
makes it only the more disgustful. No ; Paris is not 
France ; but fortunately the old France still survives 
elsewhere, the France of industry and honest wealth, 
the France of wit and wisdom, the France of con- 
stancy and courage, the France that so long domi- 
nated Europe and put the last touch upon the 
achievements of our modem civiHsation without let- 
ting go the fine traditions of the past. 

If you wish to see the France that once was and 
the France that is to-day, outside of Paris, come 
with me to Rouen, that beautiful old city on the 
Seine. It is only a few hours from Paris on the 
south and from Le Havre on the north. Do not, like 
most travellers, break your journey there for only 
half a day; but settle down for some weeks in a 



ROUEN 107 

quiet hostelry on the Rue des Carmes. The place 
is rather dingy and uninviting when you view it from 
the street; but after you pass through its broad 
archway and cross a courtyard laid with flagstones 
in the good old fashion, you will enter a lovely green 
garden lying in the very heart of the hotel, with turf- 
hke velvet, and having a sweet repose about it worth 
not merely a cycle of Cathay, but infinite cycles of 
the raucous, harlot-city, Paris. Your room will look 
out upon this stretch of turf. You will hear no 
noises in the morning. You can have your dejeuner 
brought to you there at any hour that you please; 
and when you like, you can sally forth to fldner in 
the sunshine which filters softly down upon the medi- 
a3val streets of Rouen itself. 

The city has something of the early nineteenth 
century about it. It has much more of the seven- 
teenth and eighteenth centuries. Its glorious cruci- 
form cathedral of fretted stone-work, dark with 
time, takes you back to the reign of Philippe Auguste, 
who expelled the half-hearted troops of King John 
of England about the time when the English barons 
forced that king to set his seal to Magna Carta and 
then to hasten away from Runnimede with livid face, 



108 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

gnawing his nails to the quick, and snarling blas- 
phemies. What a wonderful blending of history and 
fiction is to be found in this old city ! Here the Bur- 
gundians and the French contended ; here the French 
and English fought; here Jeanne Dare was tried, 
condemned, and burned after suffering indescribable 
indignity and outrage. Here, too, in our own time, 
the tramp of German soldiery has been heard along 
the streets, while the people looked through their 
closed shutters at the stolid Teutons, whose helmets 
streamed up the Rue Jeanne Dare to disperse in 
little splashes of steel among the dwellings whose 
owners were compelled to shelter them. How vividly 
has Guy de Maupassant in Boule de Suif set that 
picture before the eye! 

The advance guard of three corps met at precisely the same 
moment in the Place de I'Hotel de Ville ; and through all the neigh- 
bouring streets came the German army, spreading out their ranks 
and making the pavement echo with their heavy, rhythmic tread. 
Orders shouted in an unknown guttural tongue rose before houses 
which seemed dead and empty, though behind the closed shutters 
watchful eyes peered out upon these victors who were masters of the 
city, of its people's fortunes, and of their very lives, according to the 
law of war. 

The inhabitants in their darkened chambers were filled with that 
excitement which springs from any cataclysm, from those tremen- 
dous, murderous heavings of the earth against which all foresight 




o 



o 

a 

.S 
'a 

m 

(-1 



ROUEN 109 

and all resistance are of no avail. The same sensation Tevives each 
time the established order is reversed, and there is no more security, 
but when all that upholds the laws of men and of nature lies at the 
mercy of an ignorant and brutal force. An earthquake crushing 
under its wreckage an entire people; an overflowing river rolUng 
drowned peasants along with bodies of cattle and with beams torn 
from the roofs of dwelling-houses ; or an exultant army slaughtering 
those who would defend themselves, carrying away prisoners, pillag- 
ing in the name of the sword, and thanking God to the roaring accom- 
paniment of cannon — these are among the awful scourges which 
test our faith in everlasting justice. 

But to-day there is nothing to remind one that 
Rouen ever felt the heavy hand of Germany. It is 
a pleasant, genial city and very rich withal. Along 
its quays lie ships which have been floated inward 
up the Seine, together with those little bateaux- 
mouches on which one may slowly make his way from 
Le Havre to Rouen in perhaps a dozen hours, lazily 
watching the fertile countryside and the tortuous 
windings of the river, wliile regaling himself upon 
the good things of the land. These little craft re- 
mind me of the somewhat mythical canal-boats which 
delighted the good Jos Sedley in Belgium, plying 
between Bruges and Ghent, and of which Thackeray 
wrote : " So prodigiously good was the eating and 
drinking on board these sluggish but most comfort- 
able vessels, that there are legends extant of an Eng- 



110 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

lish traveller, who, coming to Belgium for a week, 
and travelling in one of these boats, was so delighted 
with the fare that he went backwards and forwards 
from Ghent to Bruges perpetually, until the rail- 
roads were invented, when he drowned himself on the 
last trip of the passage boat." 

Fortunately, the railroads have not interfered with 
the little vessels which lazily make their way from Le 
Havre to Rouen and even to Paris. A traveller on 
any one of them is a personage of great importance. 
He is served with deference. He is a sort of monarch 
incognito upon his travels. All he needs is to forget 
that time has any value, and to let his soul expand 
under the influence of the sunshine, the glimpses of 
green fields, the dainty dishes which are set before 
him, and the deHcately cobwebbed bottle of Pontet 
Canet that makes him feel as though he were sur- 
rounded by blossoming vineyards in an everlasting 
summer. 

When I come to write down just what it is that 
fascinates me most in Rouen, I find that there are 
many things. In the first place, this is the France of 
royalty and not of the wretched Republican regime 



ROUEN 111 

which has converted Paris into a vulgar shop. In 
Rouen, men and women still fear God and have some 
regard for man. The courtesy — the old Gallic 
courtoisie — still prevails. The people have not yet 
learned from foreigners to be brusque and rude. 
Even the market-women bow and smile if you pur- 
chase an oeillet for your buttonhole, instead of grunt- 
ing at you as they do in Paris when you decline to 
spend fifty francs for a bunch of orchids. Everyone 
who enters a shop deferentially removes his hat. 
Everybody seems glad to see everybody else. The 
whole population, in fact, resembles a good-natured, 
well-fed family who are on the best of terms with one 
another and with the world at large. Round about 
the city, peeping out of thick clusters of greenery, 
are the chateaux of the old noblesse. Catholic and 
royalist to the very core. They have wealth to spare, 
and this is why the shops of Rouen are peculiarly 
attractive. Down by the Grosse Horloge with its 
double dial spanning a narrow street, and built and 
carved four or five hundred years ago, there are win- 
dows full of confections which must delight the 
hearts of the ladies who rightfully preix the noble 
de to their historic names. I am sure that they would 



112 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

equally delight the judicious American girl if any 
American girl were sufficiently well-advised to pass by 
Paris and do her shopping in Rouen. And such 
quaint bits of gold and silver work as you can see 
displayed by all the jewellers with every sort of varia- 
tion on the fleur de It/s, that symbol of Old France! 

Rouen is a place of nooks and corners, as befits its 
mediaeval character. The noblesse of whom I have 
spoken have their own particular haunts where they 
are not brought into unseemly contact with the bour- 
geoisie. Some one told me in Paris of a very special 
restaurant regarding which few travellers have ever 
heard, but which is maintained in a special way for 
the convenience of persons with a de before their 
name. Of course any one who comes there will be ad- 
mitted, just as any one may occupy a seat along 
Rotten Row ; but as the masses in London by a sort 
of instinct keep away from Rotten Row, so do the 
masses in Rouen refrain from invading this patrician 
restaurant. My friend also gave me the name of a 
very rare and wonderful vintage of Burgundy which 
is to be obtained there. 

Desiring to see everything, I made my way to the 
address indicated. It is not far from the river front 



ROUEN 113 

and the Quai des Anglais — that is to say, it is not 
very far as we usually measure distances. But if we 
could convert time into space, we should have to say 
that it is thousands of leagues removed from the 
sunny, noisy promenade where Englishmen in tweeds 
and Englishwomen with green parasols and prepos- 
terous hats go sauntering up and down. You turn 
a comer and find yourself in a very quiet street, 
and presently you come to a narrow unpretentious 
little doorway, shaded by a friendly tree. You ring 
a bell and the door is opened for you by a discreet- 
looking waiter who ushers you into a small room 
at the foot of a pair of stairs. There is a pleasant- 
faced, alert-looking, middle-aged woman sitting at a 
desk. She views you carefully, but says nothing, 
while your hat and stick are taken from you and you 
are invited deferentially to ascend the stairs. They 
lead you into an apartment of moderate size, plainly 
furnished, yet bright with flowers and verdant plants. 
Then you take your seat at one of the Httle tables. 
The maitre gargon approaches you and bows. He 
will not do anything so vulgar as to offer you a menu, 
but he mentions a number of plats which are the 
plats du jour, very much as though you were in a 



114 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

private house. You know that they are especially 
prepared with the utmost gastronomic skill, and so 
you make your choice with security of mind. What 
wine would Monsieur desire? You speak the name 
of the rare and wonderful vintage as though you 
were pronouncing a spell, or saying " Open Sesame ! " 
in the Cavern of the Forty Thieves. And indeed the 
effect is very much the same as though you had actu- 
ally uttered the words of a potent charm. The 
maitre gargon is visibly moved, while a hush falls on 
his four satellites. You feel that an echo of what 
you have said is sounding responsively from the 
cellars underneath. 

The luncheon is served in its beseeming order. 
Every dish is the creation of an artist. Then, at the 
proper moment, you are conscious that something 
important is about to happen. The doors are 
opened, and there enters the head-waiter, followed by 
the sommelier who holds in both his hands a long 
and ancient-looking and cobweb-covered bottle. He 
moves slowly lest the precious liquor be disturbed. 
Behind him follow the four other waiters somewhat 
as though they were guards of honour. There is 
much ceremony about the drawing of the cork, and 




The Cathedral of Notre Dame at Rouen 



ROUEN 115 

an obvious anxiety. Then the rich dark-red Bur- 
gundy is decanted for you almost drop by drop. If 
you were to drink it with less empressement than has 
been shown in the serving of it, you would break the 
heart of the sommelier and change the dainty sunlit 
salon into an abode of gloom. But, since you are 
quite well aware of this, you drink with reverence, 
letting the royal wine glide gently past your palate. 
You pause, so that your appreciation may be evident 
to those who watch you earnestly but with profound 
respect. Indeed, this is the only way that you would 
wish to drink such wine as this. When you have 
finished, you feel as though you had been acting as 
the hierophant in some Eleusinian rite. It is decid- 
edly an experience. 

Then, of course, there are the memories with which 
the city teems. I have already spoken of them, and 
yet I have merely hinted where I might have written 
fifty pages. For, when Philippe Auguste drove out 
King John in the year of grace 1204, the town was 
already very ancient. The Romans knew of it as 
Rotomagus, and their later emperors made it a second 
capital. RoUo with his Norsemen settled here before 
the year 900. It was the capital of William the 



116 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

Conqueror before he crossed the Channel and pos- 
sessed himself of Saxon England. Here the child- 
prince Arthur was murdered by King John. In the 
huge round tower which still stands as the donjon of 
a castle now destroyed, poor Jeanne Dare was tried 
and was also foully slandered by the ruffian who had 
been placed within her cell. Rouen beat off the troops 
of Henry of Navarre until he had abj ured the Protes- 
tant faith. Here were bom the two Corneilles, and 
here died in exile the famous Earl of Clarendon in 
1674. 

I love to stroll along the leafy boulevards which 
circle the city with their verdure, supplanting the 
ancient ramparts that have long been levelled. I 
love also the quaint old houses in the crooked, nar- 
row streets. They overhang them with mouldering 
gables of carved oak; and in a moment, a few steps 
will take you from the twentieth century into the 
fourteenth. It must be confessed that some of these 
dark lanes have an evil reputation, and it is hardly 
safe to wander through them after nightfall. In the 
daytime, if you look up as you pass, you will see 
wicked painted faces through the casement windows. 
When the dusk comes on, strange sounds are heard 



ROUEN 117 

within these dimly lighted homes of vice; and not 
infrequently some stranger, usually a sailor, is found 
in the morning lying prone upon the well-worn cobble- 
stones, with a long knife in his back. There is one 
particularly evil street or rather passage which runs 
along the old cathedral and connects the broad and 
spacious Rue de la Republique with the Rue des 
Carmes. For some reason it is not lighted in the 
evening, and nothing could be more sinister. Once 
upon a time, being in a hurry, I passed through it 
in order to reach my hotel more quickly than by 
taking another route. It was black as ink and as 
still as death, and it reminded me of nothing so strik- 
ingly as of a sort of wolf-trap set for men. You 
may be sure that I lost no time ; yet as I neared the 
other end I heard a pattering of feet behind me, and 
you may take my word for it that I had sensations. 

If I were writing only to please a very special 
public, I should have much to say about Madame 
Bovary; for readers of Flaubert will not forget the 
strange things that befell her in Rouen. There is 
her meeting with Leon in the old cathedral when he 
was half innocent and she was wholly bold. And 
there is her drive with him in a closed cab from the 



118 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

Rue Grant-Pont, along the river, to the cemetery, 
and through nearly every street. " From time to 
time the coachman on his box cast despairing eyes at 
the cafes " ; but when he wished to stop, the voice of 
Leon sounded sharply from within the cab : " Con- 
tinuez ! Continuez touj ours ! " I will not, however, 
dwell on this, for it seems out of place; but I will 
quote a bit from Flaubert — an exquisite passage 
which shows you Rouen as you see it when you stroll 
into it after breakfasting : 

It was a lovely summer morning. Silver sparkled in the jewellers' 
windows; and the light, falling obHquely on the cathedral, made 
mirrors of the corners of the ancient stone. A flock of birds fluttered 
in the blue sky around the trefoiled terrace. The public square, 
echoing with cries, was fragrant with the flowers that were massed 
along its pavement — roses, jasmines, pinks, narcissi, and forget-me- 
nots, nestling between moist grasses and mint and watercress. The 
fountains plashed in the centre; and beneath immense umbrellas, 
amid heaps of melons, the flower women, bareheaded, were twisting 
paper around clusters of fresh violets. 

So much for Flaubert, that epileptic genius who 
was himself almost a possession of Rouen, since he 
was born not far away, in the delightful little ham- 
let of Les Andelys. I could also make some remarks 
about the theatre which Emma Bovary attended with 
her husband; for the building still stands, a mon- 



ROUEN 119 

ument of ugly architecture which was probably 
thought to be impressive in the year 1822. And not 
only does Flaubert have a share in Rouen, but so has 
his disciple, Guy de Maupassant. Apart from the 
fact that the story of Boule de Suif opens in this 
city, there is in its suburbs the village of Canteleu, 
where, as will be remembered by all readers of Bel 
Ami, Georges Duroy, that sublimated type of maque- 
reau, took his bride, who had been Madeleine Fores- 
tier, to see his parents, the old country people who 
kept a little cabaret — "a small house composed of 
a ground floor and a garret. A branch of pine nailed 
over the door indicated in the old style that the 
thirsty might find refreshment." Madeleine was not 
pleased with her peasant hosts, — the coarse old man 
who lived amid the stale smell of pipes and cheap 
cigars, nor the horny-handed old woman who looked 
at Madeleine with suspicion because of her " frills 
and musk." Yet it was Madeleine's cleverness which 
turned Canteleu to some account. You will remember 
how she afterwards suggested that her husband should 
begin calling himself Georges Du Roy de Cantel, 
and that he should have his visiting cards engrave4 
thus with his name surmounted by a baron's coronet. 



120 THE NEW BAEDEKEE 

All these places are full of interest. They fasci- 
nate because they crowd the mind with so many rem- 
iniscences. But I wish that some one had worked 
into a novel or any other bit of writing an account 
of that extraordinary mountain which overlooks 
Rouen and which is known as Bonsecours. You can 
ascend it, I believe, by a funicular railway; but it 
is much better to hail some lazy, lounging cocher and 
get him to drive you thither in a ramshackle fiacre. 
He will not overcharge you, and you can lie back as 
you wind around and around the mountain, very 
much as though you were ascending it in a very 
leisurely balloon. Little by little the city of Rouen 
seems to sink beneath you, and you look down upon 
it with its shining river, its heaven-piercing spires, 
its gabled roofs and bustling quays, while directly 
beneath you is a great slanting slope of chalky hill- 
side rising at an angle of almost forty-five degrees, 
and up which you yourself are toiling. At last you 
reach the summit and look out over what seems to 
be half of France spread out like a panorama at 
your feet. It is very wonderful, and no less so is 
Bonsecours itself, — the broad mountain-top with 
its richly decorated church, its monument to Jeanne 




La Vendeuse de Chansonnettes 



ROUEN 121 

Dare, and the startlingly realistic figure of the 
Saviour reared upward, life-size upon a cross. There 
are very pretty Renaissance buildings enclosing the 
statue; but after all, it is the view of the Seine and 
of the rich green hills of Normandy that draws your 
eyes away from your immediate surroundings. The 
place would not be France if there were not also 
a perfectly appointed little restaurant on the very 
summit, where you can sit and view the world beneath 
you, having at the same time a most delightful 
luncheon. Here and there at a little table you will 
see a devout pilgrim enjoying a consommatioTiy or it 
may be some piquante-looking girl who does not by 
any means appear to be a pilgrim. Tell the gargon 
to provide your driver with some bread and cheese, 
a hock, and a ten-centime cigar, and you can linger 
there for hours without having to pay an additional 
sou for cab hire. When you get ready to depart, you 
will find the cocker snugly curled up in his vehicle 
and fast asleep. Wake him, and he will grin cheer- 
fully and say, " Merci, M'sieu," and away you go at 
an accelerated pace down the dusty, winding road 
which leads you back to Rouen. 

It is rather hard to get into the confidence of the 



122 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

Rouennals, as is, indeed, the case with all French 
people in whose daily life you have no share. But 
I should say that upon this city there are left deep 
marks of the two great wars which it has seen — 
the long war of a hundred years with England, and 
the brief war of a few months with Germany. In the 
minds of the educated, the traditions of hostility to 
England are very deeply rooted. In the minds of 
the uneducated, who do not go far back for what 
they know of history, it is the hatred of Germany 
that is most intense. France and England may ar- 
range ententes. Their governments may work to- 
gether in harmony. Yet the born Frenchman who 
knows his country's annals will always think of Eng- 
land as the historic foe of France. 

I took a walk one day with a Frenchman who had 
lived long abroad and who had even been naturalised 
as an American citizen. We strolled upon the boule- 
vards where once the ramparts used to stand, and 
we talked of many themes. He was now, he thought, 
a real cosmopolite. He looked at all things with a 
purely philosophic air of absolute detachment. One 
nation to him was the same as any other nation. 
Germany? Ah, yes, there was some ill-feeling with 



ROUEN 123 

regard to Germany ; but that was only a temporary 
affair. Some adjustment would be made, some diplo- 
matic arrangement by which a part at least of Al- 
sace or Lorraine would be given back to France. The 
topic did not greatly interest him, though in 1871, 
when a very young man, he had been one of the 
Gardes Mobiles, and had served during the seige 
of Paris under General Trochu. I scarcely knew 
whether to admire or to deplore his indifference. 
But presently, I happened to speak of the capture 
of Rouen by the English in 1449. That was more 
than four hundred years ago, and you would hardly 
think that it would trouble the mind of a man who 
could remember the Franco-Prussian War with calm 
philosophy. Yet, at the very mention of the English, 
his eyes began to snap and his beard to bristle. 

" Ah ! " cried he ; " those sacred pigs ! Those 
English ! We shall be even with them yet ! " 

And then he poured forth a flood of tumultuous 
language about the burning of poor Jeanne Dare. 
His English dropped from him like a garment, and 
the r^s of his French rolled like a drum that calls to 
battle. He stamped his feet and clenched his fists. 
His indifferentism had vanished into air. It was an 



124 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

interesting exhibition. When he stopped for breath, 
I ventured to put in a word, having some regard for 
the facts of history. 

" But," said I, " although the English were in a 
way responsible for Jeanne Dare's death, it was the 
Due de Bourgogne who betrayed her into their 
hands. It was a Frenchman, the Bishop of Beauvais, 
who presided at her trial. Those who condemned her 
were theologians from the University of Paris. She 
was actually burned at the stake by Frenchmen." 

B-r-r-r-r-r-r ! The atmosphere grew thick with 
consonants and vowels ; and a vision of pointed 
whiskers whirling in the air made me fairly dizzy. 
I thought it best to say no more, and soon after- 
wards we parted. That is the way in which edu- 
cated Frenchmen feel about the English. 

But when you get down to the common people, the 
peasants, the small tradesmen, and the like, they 
seem to have forgotten the perfidious English, and 
to be cherishing a sullen, latent flame of anger against 
Germany. They can remember the German occupa- 
tion of Rouen; or if they cannot, they remember 
what their fathers tell them. I do not know any 
better way of testing the feelings of the French than 



ROUEN ns 

by studying the songs which are most popular with 
them at any given time. To visit a French cafe 
chantant in the provinces is as illuminating as to 
spend an evening at the Oxford in London and listen 
while the audience take up or hiss the political songs 
which are sung upon the stage. In France they have 
small sheets of music which give the words and the 
air of the cJiansonettes that are heard nightly in the 
little cafes chantants. These songs are sold for a few 
sous by girls in the poorer streets. They are bought 
by the thousands, and when they are sung in the 
cafes the refrain is caught up by every one and sung, 
not casually, but, as the French themselves would 
say, avec intention. Judging from a careful study 
of these songs I should imagine that the masses of 
the French still entertain a violent dislike to Ger- 
many, and that they still believe Russia to be a 
friend, not only powerful but loyal to her ally. The 
French in Paris know better, but not so the French 
in the smaller cities. 

There is a very popular song, for instance, en- 
titled " L'Enfant Chantait la Marseillaise." On the 
outer cover is depicted a burly German threatening 
with his sword a little Alsatian girl. The words of 



126 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

the song are rather interesting. The first stanza 
runs as follows : 

Dans un village de I'Alsace 
Parmi les soldats du vainqueur, 
Une blonde fiUette passe 
En murmurant un air vengeur. 
En I'entendant ainsi chanter 
Notre ancien hymne de guerre, 
"Tais-toi!" lui crie un officier; 
Mais repondant d'une voix fi%re 
L'enfant lui dit: "Je suis Fran9aise! 
Et malgre tons vos soldats, 
Vous ne m'empecherez pas 
De chanter la Marseillaise. 
Allemand! je suis Fran9aise!" 

Then the lines go on to tell how the brutal Ger- 
man, " un heros de Bazeille," incensed by the girl's 
audacity, took his sword and struck her with it. 
Bleeding, she staggered back, and then: 

fipongeant le sang de son front, 
Elle dit: "A I'autre campagne, 
Les canons fran9ais s'en iront 
Vous la chanter en Allemagne.'* 

Refeiain 

L'enfant redit: "Je suis Fran9aise! 
Un jour, vous n'empecherez pas 
Que nos clairons et nos soldats 
Chez vous chantent la Marseillaise. 
Allemand ! Je meurs Fran9aise !" 




Paroles de 



IflUEffl 



All)ill[(ll!KB[i;0fil([Vll[[.PapislMHLOTllJOOBfRTi{lile(;rsIPu^ 
. "L'Enfant Chantait la Marseillaise" 



ROUEN 127 

It would be difficult to overestimate the real influ- 
ence which such songs as these possess to nourish and 
deepen the patriotic feeling of the populace. So- 
phisticated persons may laugh and look at them as 
trivial affairs ; or more likely they may never hear 
of them at all. But there must be millions of 
Frenchmen who, through the agency of these songs, 
are led to think that even little children in the lost 
provinces are treated with brutality because they are 
proud of their French blood and because they cling 
to everything which reminds them of their beloved 
France. 

Only a little less striking is another popular song 
entitled " Je Bois a la Russie." One stanza, with its 
refrain, as I heard it thundered out in a large cafe 
near the Place Saint Marc, will sufficiently illustrate 
the ominous undertone of warlike feeling which 
makes such songs well known throughout the length 
and breadth of France. I wish that all my readers 
could have heard it suns as I did. 



'& 



On verra dans les deux puissances, 
Symbole la fraternite 
Nos drapeaux melant leurs nuances 
Sur les murs de chaque cite. 



128 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

Mais viennent les jours de bataille 
Planant au dessus de nos rangs 
A travers le feu, la mitraille, 
lis nous conduiront triomphants I 

Refrain 

Pour feter la sainte harmonie 
Qui regne entre les deux pays, 
Levant ma coupe, mes amis, 
Levant ma coupe, mes amis, 
Je bois, je bois, je bois a la Russie ! 

You would not hear such a song as this roared 
fiercely in Paris as you may hear it roared in Rouen 
or Amiens or Orleans, or any of the other smaller 
cities. You would not see in Paris the kindling eyes 
and the flushed faces, nor would you hear the deep 
tones thrilling with emotions which are a striking 
commentary upon the songs themselves. 

In Paris, men are too sophisticated, too cynical, 
too pessimistic; but, fortunately, you may go out- 
side of Paris and find both men and women who be- 
lieve in something, who have hope and energy and 
vitality, who love la patrie with all their hearts, and 
who devoutly hate its enemies. And this is why, as 
I said at the beginning, Paris is by no means France. 
Look beyond it, and there you will find still beating 



ROUEN 129 

the great chivalrous heart of that gallant nation 
which, with all its faults, has stood for centuries at 
the summit of art and literature and intellectual 
activity of every sort, while around the achievements 
of the mind and the imagination there has gleamed 
the splendid aura of overwhelming martial glory. 



VI 

BRUSSELS AND MAUNES 

What I particularly like about the kingdom of Bel- 
gium is its compactness. Everything lies, so to 
speak, right under your hand, and you can go from 
Anywhere to Anywhere-Else in about an hour's time. 
Of course, this in itself would be of no especial con- 
sequence if there were little to see and to excite your 
imagination. But every inch of Belgian territory 
teems with memories and associations of incompar- 
able ricliness. The present kingdom is a purely mod- 
ern creation. On its soil, however, there have been 
wrought out some of the most tremendously cata- 
clysmic episodes of history. The Roman legions 
thundered over its wooded slopes. It drank the 
blood of unnumbered patriots under Spanish rule. 
It witnessed the barbarities of Alva and his black- 
browed torture-mongers. It saw, upon the field of 
Waterloo, the downfall of the most marvellous man 
who ever trod the earth and who forced the haughti- 
est of kings and emperors to become his lackeys. 



BRUSSELS AND MALINES 131 

And yet all this is but a small part of what Bel- 
gium brings to mind. Every city street, every 
gabled mansion, almost every farmhouse that you 
pass so carelessly, is linked with some tradition or 
with some familiar name belonging to the imperish- 
able records of statesmanship or scholarship or art. 
" Infinite treasure in a little room " — this well-worn 
phrase might properly be made the motto of a coun- 
try which of all the countries in the world is the 
most charming and, if I may use such an adjective, 
the most lovable. 

Were it only a question of compactness, some of 
these things might be said of Holland. But, unfor- 
tunately, in order to see Holland it is necessary to 
have some sort of contact with the Dutch — and this 
is quite sufficient to destroy your pleasure. More- 
over, Holland is so flat and dull and ditch-like! Its 
maze of dykes and trenches and canals, with their 
slimy ooze and sluggish streams of liquid mud, de- 
press the mind and propagate malaria. Holland, to 
me at least, is an abhorrent hole, intended by an in- 
scrutable design of Providence for ducks and Dutch- 
men, canaux, canards^ canaille^ as Voltaire so wittily 
expressed it. But Belgium, from small Namur to 



132 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

bold Liege, where Quentin Durward, dagger in 
hand, faced the Wild Boar of the Ardennes, and from 
the light-hearted elegance of Spa to the opulent 
quaintness of Antwerp — c^est la perfection meme. 

These thoughts were in my mind, as I took a rather 
late dejeuner in the Grand Hotel at Brussels. If 
Brussels is in reality le petit Paris, then surely the 
Grand Hotel is a replica, reduced in size, of the 
Hotel Continental in the Rue de Rivoli, famed for 
giving temporary shelter to diplomatists and minor 
royalties and kings in exile. And the Grand Hotel 
in Brussels improves on the original. You take your 
breakfast in the shady portico which surrounds the 
inner court, whence you may; through the clustered 
palms that screen you, behold the busy life of the 
hotel. A good breakfast prepares the mind for phil- 
osophic observation. I do not give much thought 
to the pleasures of the table; yet on that particular 
morning I was conscious that my breakfast, simple 
though it was, had a certain poetic quality about it 
— harmonious in its composition, a gastronomic 
symphony, a sort of Morgenlied, intended to be eaten 
and not sung. 

To the quick-luncher and the hasty tourist there 



BRUSSELS AND MALINES 133 

is nothing worthy of one's admiration in a poached 
egg. It is simply a poached egg, just as Words- 
worth's primrose was only a yellow primrose to Mas- 
ter Peter Bell. Ah, but there is such a difference in 
poached eggs — a difference as abysmal as that which 
divided Master Peter Bell's mind from the mind of 
Wordsworth! A new-laid egg, when poached lov- 
ingly by an artist's hand, comes to you firm and 
exquisitely white, — still whiter because of the crisp 
brown of the toast on which it lies. And it swells 
with a delicate contour j ust over the golden yolk — 
swells like the white breast of a dove. A dash of 
pure cayenne imparts a flush of rosy red to the crest 
of this dainty mamelon, and you look at it with a 
feeling of pure pleasure. And by its side are several 
slices of galantine de volaille, their pinkish surface 
diversified by the truffles that have been set so deftly 
here and there. A bowl of dark green cresses, fresh 
from the water of a running brook, affords a con- 
trast with the pale blond colour of the pats of new, 
unsalted butter. And there is a small basket woven 
of fresh leaves, and filled with strawberries — not 
the huge, vulgar, staring strawberries of the hot- 
house or the garden, but tiny, modest f raises dw bois. 



134 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

the epicure's delight, picked in the woods by the slim 
brown fingers of some peasant girl. In their aromatic 
fragrance, as you crush them in clotted cream, they 
bring to your inner vision the sweet woodland with 
interlacing boughs, and mosses under foot, and the 
ripple of clear water over pebbles. The coffee 
steams beside you ; the crisp rolls coyly tempt you. 
The gleaming silver, the lucent crystal, and the 
spotless napery complete the spell which art and 
taste have cast about so simple and yet so satisfac- 
tory a rite as Breakfast. 

Quite slowly and with a profound aesthetic appreci- 
ation, I consume the dejeuner. One should not hasten 
pleasure. He should get the fulness of its flavour, 
as when he drinks a rare liqueur and lets it die upon 
the palate drop by drop. But when the galantine is 
gone, and the plump, dove-like ^g^ has vanished, and 
the cresses are no more, and the coffee-cup is emptied, 
I light luxuriously a cigarette, enjoying the peculiar 
relish which is given by the first smoke of the day. 
The faint blue rings with their delicious scent float 
upward through the palm leaves ; and I lean com- 
fortably back, and look into the court, where human 
life is every day epitomised. 



BRUSSELS AND MALINES 135 

Surely there exists no more impressive figure of 
benign authority than that of the majestic portier 
as he rears his six-foot-four of sheer magnificence 
near the entrance to the courtyard. At his com- 
mand, the small chasseurs fly forth in all directions. 
His word is law to the silent concierge. Betimes, a 
white-clad chef from the inner regions holds deferen- 
tial converse with him. As carriages drive in, this 
stately being deigns to greet the persons who alight 
from them, while some more humble functionary lifts 
the luggage down. Englishmen, in preposterous 
clothes and flustered by their journey from Dover 
to Ostend, splutter and speak with insular abrupt- 
ness to him; but the great man himself is always 
tranquil and serene. He humours them and addresses 
them in their own tongue, and bids them be at peace. 
And the anxious-looking American ladies, intent on 
seeing all of Europe in two months, are soothed by 
his gracious words. German or Spaniard, Turk or 
Dane — all receive the personal attention of this 
polyglot, who takes royal liberties with every lan- 
guage, although he has no language of his own. 

The fact that he seems to speak these languages 
with certain variations used to puzzle me. Of 



136 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

what race are these gorgeous portiers, anyhow ? 
Their Enghsh is a little like German. Their German 
has a sort of a far-away Italian touch to it. Their 
French is that of Stratf ord-atte-Bowe. Their Italian 
might be said to have a flavour of Dutch. Their 
Dutch and Spanish are each remarkable in its own 
way. Tell me where are portiers bred? — if I may 
take liberties with Shakespeare. Having a turn for 
original investigation I once tried to solve the prob- 
lem in Dresden, for it makes no difference where you 
find a portier. Each one is like all the rest. I ques- 
tioned this Dresden representative of his tribe at an 
hour when he was not busy. He inclined himself 
toward me from his great height and was benignant 
though unsmiling; since no man has ever seen a 
portier smile. 

" Would you mind telling me in what country you 
were born," said I. 

" Ah, zat I do not know," returned he, with an air 
of great dubiety. 

" But," I persisted, " of what nationality was your 
father? What country did he come from? " 

" Nacionalitee ? I know not ze word. I did never 
see my fazzer." 



BRUSSELS AND MALINES 137 

This matter of original investigation was not easy 
as it seemed. But I persisted in a truly scientific 
spirit. 

"Well, then, what is your own language.?" 

" Sare, I spik all ze langages — all of zem." 

" Yes," said I. " But which one of them is your 
own. When you are all by yourself, what language 
do you think in? " 

The portier drew himself up with immense dignity 
and just a little touch of indignation. 

" Sare,"Tie answered with some hauteur, " I nevaire 
sink!" 

All this added to the admiration with which I 
viewed the portier. That he should never think, that 
he had no language of his own, that he never seemed 
to have b^en bom but simply to have come into exist- 
ence, — all this explained the impressiveness which 
travellers feel in him — a being who is neither autoch- 
thonous nor yet caeligenous. Rightly should we rev- 
erence all members of this race, if they can be said 
to constitute a race. And the departing traveller — 
how conscious is he of the potentate's superiority! 
To slip a ten-franc piece into the hand of so resplend- 
ent a personage seems utterly impertinent — almost 



138 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

insulting. Yet it is received quite graciously and 
with a courtly bow ; for such gifts are not really tips. 
They are tribute, as from vassals to a sovereign. 
What king, no matter how magnificent, ever refused 
the taxes of his grateful subjects? Let us call these 
little offerings by the good old English feudal term 
*' benevolences," consecrated by historic usage. Let 
us never speak or think of them as " tips." 

The morning nears the time of noon, and the scene 
grows still more animated. The coming and the 
going, the softened roll of carriage- wheels, the little 
dramas of every-day existence, the partings and the 
meetings, the voluble and shrill, yet not unpleasing, 
converse of the various domestics, the blending of 
languages in the speech of men and women and young 
girls — all this takes place before me as in a theatre 
of which my shady nook within the portico is a pri- 
vate box. I protest that here I could spend my life 
in watching and in listening. I might spend it, 
doubtless, to far more advantage; but, at least, in 
this place I should never once be bored. 

The time has long since passed when good Ameri- 
cans on dying go of necessity to Paris. In these 
days, many go to London, and others to the Riviera. 



BRUSSELS AND MALINES 139 

Some even stay at home. If I were found to be a 
good enough American to have the right of choosing, 
I should ask an immortality in Brussels. There is 
something about Paris that chills the blood and makes 
one shudder, after the first glamour of its charm 
is dimmed. Resplendent, exquisite, all-satisfying 
though it seems, la ville Iv/miere may well inspire fear. 
I cannot help personifying cities ; and Paris, like the 
race that reared it, is all glorious without and hard 
as flint within. Come to her rich and joyous and 
avid of dehghts, and she will give you her caresses lav- 
ishly. Her subtle breath will thrill you ; her beauty 
captivate you; her eagerness to yield, her absolute 
abandonment, will fascinate you. But if illness fall 
upon you or if your wealth be wasted, or if, in a word, 
you have nothing more to give her, then her touch 
is ice, her laugh is mockery, — 

et meretrix retro 
Periura cedit; 

and you may quote still further and describe her as 
Non Mauris animmn mitior anguibus. 

But not so Brussels. Brussels is a whole-souled, 
winsome camarade, who likes you for yourself and 



140 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

will not change. She has wit without a spark of 
malice. She is clever but not cynical. She has grace 
and charm but is not vain. A genial Flemish warmth 
has somehow suffused itself into the Gallic brilliancy, 
and the two, inextricably mingled, make Brussels the 
soul's true home, from which, because it is so in- 
finitely appealing, no one who knows it will ever 
wish to stray. 

A shaft of sunlight glances through the archway 
at the entrance and flecks with gold the little kiosque 
wherein a dark-haired girl dispenses Turkish cigar- 
ettes. Mademoiselle is pretty, and she will give you 
a charming smile as you make a selection from her 
wares. She will even enter into an amiable conver- 
sation with you in a casual way, keeping the while 
a keen Gallic eye wide open for another purchaser. 
But the sunlight, though it gives to the kiosque a 
momentary splendour, serves to remind me that the 
day is speeding by. One must not spend it all as a 
mere afterpiece to breakfast. Something of my com- 
patriots' uneasy sense of duty stirs within me. In 
this twentieth century, the Puritan conscience has 
survived only in that strange compulsion which leads 



BRUSSELS AND MALINES 141 

Americans and English people, when they travel, to 
dash with desperate energy from train to train, from 
inn to inn, from church to slum, from Whitechapel 
to Venice, and from the grave of some venerated 
martyr to Liberty's distracting shop on Regent 
Street. I have just enough of this uncomfortable 
virtue to make me feel a bit disquieted. I, too, will 
go somewhere. I will resist the diabolical tempta- 
tion to stay in Brussels like a reasonable being, to 
pace the Boulevard Anspach, to loiter in the pre- 
cincts of the ancient Hotel de Ville, to stroll past 
the brilliant shop-fronts of the Montague de la Cour, 
to ride a well-broken, easy-going Belgian saddle- 
horse along the Allee Verte, where George Osborne 
and Amelia and Rawdon Crawley and Becky and the 
elaborate Jos drove up and down in the days preced- 
ing Waterloo. No! Quick, gargon! A time-table! 
I must be off. 

Just here the thought occults that, as I said be- 
fore, this Belgium is a most compact and comfort- 
able country. One can go somewhere without going 
very far. Let me see — there is Malines. But is 
Malines actually Somewhere? May it not be really 
Nowhere.? What do I recall about Mahnes.? 



142 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

Only a very little and that little very vaguely. 
Malines is the seat of the Primate of Belgium with 
an old cathedral — a sort of Belgian Canterbury or 
Barchester. It is where Mechlin lace is made. Its 
inhabitants, like those of Bruges, are mainly paupers. 
This last vagrant bit of memory would seem to make 
the town not merely unattractive, but depressing. 
Yet, perhaps oddly, I find in it a reason for proceed- 
ing thither. A city inhabited by paupers ! How de- 
lightful as a change ! I have tarried long in London 
and in Paris, which are full of millionaires ; and I 
know too well Chicago, Pittsburgh, and New York, all 
three of which are infested by multimillionaires. How 
grateful to discover an historic city where no one 
has accumulated even a modest fortune and where 
nearly every one is positively poor! I will plunge 
myself in pauperism. The plunge will soothe a soul 
made sick by the sight of excessive riches used only 
for the harlotry of mere display. And as for the 
sneering hemistich written by some atrabilious me- 
diaeval monk — gaudet Mechlinia stvltis — this to 
me is but one more compelhng call. We meet too 
many Kneal descendants of Mr. Worldly Wiseman in 
our times. The world - — our Western world, at least 



BRUSSELS AND MALINES 143 

— is far too well supplied with " smart " men and 
with men who " hustle " and " do things." If it be 
really true that Malines abounds in foolish souls, it 
will afford perchance a resting place where one may 
turn aside and offer his devotions at the shrine of 
Sancta Simplicitas, wherein, I fear, the storks have 
long since built their nests. And a beloved Latin 
poet, far wiser than the mediaeval traducer of Ma- 
lines, has said that it is sweet to play the fool in loco. 



A smoothly gliding train deposits me, after a ride 
of twenty minutes, in the outer station at Malines. 
Perhaps it is a proof of the stultitia of the good 
burghers that they have not allowed the railway 
builders to run their lines and rear their sheds and 
noisy workshops within the circling moat, which, 
with a concentric boulevard, surrounds the quaint 
old town. If so, their folly is the height of wisdom. 
Who wishes to disturb a bit of the sixteenth century 
with the frantic clangour of the twentieth? While 
I am being driven in a very deliberate fashion into 
the heart of old Malines, there comes to me a peace 
which surely passeth the understanding of those who 



144 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

dwell in cities that are " up to date." Broad avenues 
of which the cobblestones that pave them are dull 
grey; tall gabled buildings closely set together and 
all of dull grey stone —^ Malines appears to be a 
symphony in grey over which, however, the sun 
from a serene blue sky sheds down a flood of light 
that is softened by the atmospheric quality of the 
place to an harmonious agreement with the time- 
stained roofs and mellowed gables. There is no 
sound of passing vehicles. The streets are empty, 
save that here and there some solitary figure or iso- 
lated group appears upon the narrow sidewalk. 
Ahead, and looming grandly over the whole sleepy 
city, rises the gigantic spire of St. Rombaud's, be- 
gun, perhaps, ten centuries ago, yet still unfinished. 

We enter the Grande Place and draw up before an 
ancient hostelry, which seems quite uninhabited. But 
there soon appears an aged yet far from decrepit 
servitor in livery. He says no word, but ushers me 
within — me the only person that is perceptible save 
himself. He is at once proprietor and porter, valet- 
de-chambre and waiter. How many hundred years 
has he inhabited the place? And how many years 
have passed since any one has claimed his hospital- 




The Marketplace at Malines 



BRUSSELS AND MALINES 145 

ity? The bedroom to which he guides me cannot have 
been slept in since the days of WilHam the Silent, so 
wonderful is its mustiness, so antique its furnishings, 
so strangely palpable the stillness which you feel has 
been imprisoned here for generations. As I pass the 
doorway it is not like entering a room; it is like 
breaking down the barriers of time and irreverently 
violating a sanctuary that has been consecrated to 
perpetual loneliness. 

However, the place is immaculately clean, from the 
hangings of the huge canopied affair that is a bed, 
down to the linen and the bath-towels. I deposit 
an incongruous Gladstone bag somewhere in this 
archaic chamber, throw open all the windows to let 
in the air, and then descend into the stone-flagged 
courtyard, where I find mine ancient engaged in 
polishing a pewter flagon. With grave courtesy he 
inquires at what hour Monsieur would wish to dine. 
A few words with him, and then I stroll out into 
the soft sunshine, and make my first acquaintance 
with Malines. 

It is apparently a place without inhabitants. 
Though within the circle of its moat there are shel- 
tered fifty thousand human beings, it is a rare sight 

10 



146 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

indeed to see a dozen at one time except on market- 
days. The great open places are the abodes of silence, 
rendered only more intense by the occasional click- 
clack of a pair of wooden shoes upon the pavement. 
A market-woman here and there in Flemish garb, a 
priest in black, a stray gendarme — each is conspicu- 
ous because so isolated. There are shops, but no one 
seems to enter them. You pause before a cafe debit, 
and perhaps you may descry a solitary figure in its 
dark interior slowly swallowing a draught of straw- 
hued beer. I peep into the Gothic dimness of the vast 
cathedral of St. Rombaud, and perceive a beadle 
sleeping there. I wonder who St. Rombaud was and 
why they reared this mighty structure in his honour. 
But the quest of information when one travels has 
always seemed to me the very worst of all bad form. 
One sees, one feels, one cogitates and forms hypothe- 
ses, and this is far more satisfying than a knowledge 
of mere facts. And as to St. Rombaud, it really 
does n't matter. He must have been a good man, else 
he would not have been canonised and made a saint; 
and he must have been a saint of some importance 
or they never would have piled up this majestic 
spire, three hundred feet or more in air, to reverence 



BRUSSELS AND MALINES 147 

his memory. So why disturb the beadle? Let him 
sleep on for another century or more. 

Not without interest are the lace-makers, of whom 
one may still find a few, patiently engaged over their 
delicate creations. Time was when Mechlin lace was 
highly prized. Its very name had a sumptuous sound. 
But fickle fashion now prefers 'point de Bruxelles, and 
so Malines has seen its famous industry decay. For 
my part, I cannot understand why Mechlin lace is less 
to be admired than the Irish lace which women rave 
about. To me all real lace is beautiful — dainty and 
fine and fit for princesses. To watch its creamy light- 
ness foam in the laps of these lace-makers of Malines 
is enough to cause a man to wonder whether women 
rightly estimate their privileges. Doubtless they 
think that men are satisfied to enjoy a host of lovely 
things vicariously, on the persons of their wives and 
sisters. 

DuU-hued garments, cut after conventional pat- 
terns that seldom change, are the inevitable lot of 
man. For women there are woven fabrics of en- 
trancing loveliness, in every tint and shade, from 
pure white and faint rose up the chromatic scale 
to the vividest and boldest and most flaming colours 



148 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

\ — colours that smite the eye and make it drink 
them in with a sort of Oriental thirstiness. And for 
women, too, are gathered all the glorious gems that 
earth and sea produce — superbly lustrous pearls, 
and emeralds of vivid fascination, and the deep azure 
sapphires, and iridescent opals, and the conquering 
diamond, whose flash and fire-spark have the power 
even to win hearts and vanquish virtue. All these 
and a thousand other miracles of beauty are woman's 
own, and she has the sole right to wear them, leav- 
ing man to stalk about, a dingy biped, close-cropped 
and clad in bags. Do you suppose that he would not 
feel a thrill of pleasure if he might, as of old, pos- 
sess some share of this magnificence? I do not my- 
self long to clothe my person in sable velvet slashed 
with crimson silk, or to flaunt whole yards of filmy 
lace, or to glitter from head to foot with coruscat- 
ing gems. But on behalf of my sex I should wish the 
privilege, or at least that women would admit that 
here is one of the multifarious advantages which 
men have weakly yielded to them. 

It is not all stony grey, this old Malines. Walk 
through the Place du Betail and toward the outer 
boulevard, and you will find the pretty little river 



BRUSSELS AND MALINES 149 

Dyle, meandering with meditative slowness among 
fields of richest green, or gliding under one of the 
quaint bridges, of which some thirty-five still span 
its current. The Dyle is called officially a navi- 
gable stream; yet, resting on its sloping banks for 
two delicious, dreamy hours, I see no evidence that 
it is navigated by anything save silver-bellied min- 
nows and now and then a wind-blown leaf. Here, 
it may be, the younger Teniers strolled and studied 
nature — for he was bom not far away ; and here 
perhaps the knights of Brabant oft drew rein and 
let their chargers drink. One's thoughts dwell wholly 
in the past if he lingers beside the Dyle. All that 
suggests to-day or yesterday is absent and unreal. 
When, as the shadows lengthen, I walk slowly back 
into the city, it is in the company of Gerard, son of 
Elias, or of Gerard's glorious son, Erasmus. 

The antique solitude of my inn has now melted 
harmoniously into the picture as a whole; and when 
my famulus — no modern name for him seems quite 
appropriate — announces dinner and bows me into 
a narrow room panelled in dark old oak and partly 
hung with tapestry, I feel myself the only object 
that is incongruous, with my tweeds and russet shoes, 



150 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

in place of hose and doublet and a sword. Wax 
candles of prodigious length and set in silver candle- 
sticks shed a soft light upon the table. I dine in 
solitary state — the only guest. A potage curiously 
seasoned with sorrel and other herbs, a bit of fish, 
a pasty made of larks, and a cheese with fruit are 
set before me in succession. From a long and cob- 
webbed bottle, the famulus pours out a generous 
draught of amber wine, mellow and just a little 
sweet, but of a potency, as Mr. Henry James would 
say. Thus dined the Netherlandish burghers and 
thus dined the statesmen and the scholars in those 
days when the Low Countries were a prize for which 
all Europe struggled. 

Darkness descends upon Malines. I look out on 
the Grande Place, and it is ghostly in its dimness. 
Perhaps it may have been a surfeit of antiquity that 
excites in me a reaction wholly modern, or perhaps 
the amber wine may have inspired the revolt. At 
any rate, I feel oppressed by so much greyness. The 
very smell of age which haunts the house becomes a 
source of irritation. " Confound the sixteenth cen- 
tury ! " I say aloud. " I don't belong to it. Soyons 
de not re siecle! " 



BRUSSELS AND MALINES 151 

A few stray lights are twinkling on the Place. 
A glimmer is perceptible in several windows. The in- 
habitants are evidently lighting a few candles so that 
they may find their way to bed. But see! Directly 
opposite, there is something which may be called, 
comparatively, an illumination. As many as four 
lamps are gleaming in a window. I cross the cob- 
blestones in quest of what this may betoken. I find 
myself before a sort of cabaret, from whose door 
depends a yard or two of light brown paper, in- 
scribed with characters in charcoal. The four lamps 
enable me to read the following announcement: 

Concert. 

JOH]Sr TOM 

PHOPBIETAIBE-PATKON 



%a JBelle 1Rose 

Chanteuse de Genre 
Pour Cette Semaine Seulement 

" John Tom ! " The name suggests that utterly 
impossible invention of Victor Hugo's in VHomme 
Qui Rit — Tom Jim-jack, scion of a noble English 
house. I must see John Tom. 

The place was what in France would be styled 



152 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

contemptuously a bouis-bouis; but it did not de- 
serve that rather mysterious name. A long, nar- 
row room, with sanded floor, and benches and tables. 
At the upper end a small square platform, with a 
piano just below it at one side; and at the other 
side a cashier's desk. A pale and hectic-looking 
man was tinkling tunes abstractedly on the piano. 
A young woman of some embonpoint, evidently La 
Belle Rose, did needlework beside the pianist. At 
the desk presided Mme. John Tom, matronly and 
placid, while M. John Tom himself was ministering 
to the infrequent demands of half. a dozen men and 
women, whose thirst for beer was held in check by 
their instincts of economy. It was a picture almost 
domestic in its restfulness. 

From time to time. La Belle Rose would put aside 
her needlework, leave her chair and ascend the plat- 
form to interpret one of her chansons de genre — 
songs which had been popular in Paris ten years 
before, but which were now for the first time heard 
in the archiepiscopal city of Malines. I can still 
hear the slightly nasal voice of La Belle Rose — the 
true music-hall voice all over the world — rendering 
with some archness of intonation the refrain: 



BRUSSELS AND MALINES 153 

** J'arrive d'Orleans, 

Mon p'tit nom c'est Estelle, 
J'aurai dix-huit printemps 

A la fraise nouvelle. 
Je SOTS d'chez mes parents, 
J'ai mes trente-deux dents, 
Et d'bons antecedents 
J'arrive d'Orleans!" 

Her audience listened with silent approbation. 
Still better than these frivolous chansonettes, they 
liked such sober songs as " Le Credo du Paysan " : 

Je crois en Toi, maitre de la Nature, 
Je crois en Toi, et dans la Liberte — 

because this struck more surely the chord of their 
own hard-working, honest, God-fearing lives. It is 
all so different in France. 

La Belle Rose did not think it worth her while to 
carry around the little wooden dish which is conse- 
crated in all such places to la quete. She sewed 
steadily between her musical performances, and on 
the whole appeared to me a sort of Belgian Fother- 
ingay, who, however, needed not the fitful chaperon- 
age of a Belgian Costigan. There were, appar- 
ently, no Pendennises or Fokers in Malines. 

M. John Tom, perceiving me to be a stranger, 



154 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

gave me the honour of his personal attention. He 
was a clean-shaven, stout and very comfortable- 
looking individual. He trusted that Monsieur was 
pleased with the entertainment. Monsieur was wholly 
pleased, and said so. 

'' Ah," resumed John Tom, " Monsieur est peut- 
etre Anglais ? " No, Monsieur was American. The 
information visibly excited reminiscences in the brain 
of John Tom. He broke into English suddenly, as 
when one turns on the waters of a hydrant. 

" Americain ! Ah, I 'ave visit I'Amerique. Yas, 
I 'ave visit zat most large city of ze contrie of 
Monsieur ! " 

" New York," said I, with the bland assurance of 
Manhattan. 

But my metropolitan presumption was to be 
properly rebuked. John Tom looked puzzled for a 
moment. 

" New York? Non, je ne le connais pas. 'Oboken." 

And then John Tom sat down beside me and dis- 
coursed of many things that he had seen when, in 
a Red Star vessel, he had sailed and sailed and sailed 
over an incredible amount of water, and had then 
beheld the glories of 'Oboken for five whole days. 



BRUSSELS AND MALINES 155 

I had now shed the sixteenth century completely. 
'Oboken brought me back to our own times. 

John Tom returned at intervals. La Belle Rose 
sang. The clink of copper money was heard from 
the comptoir where Mme. John Tom presided. It 
was all very comfortable. But in time the big bell 
of St. Rombaud boomed out upon the stilly night. 
The last of the convives rose to go. John Tom 
again approached me. He regretted profoundly 
that the municipal ordinances compelled him to close 
his doors at ten. But if Monsieur desired to re- 
main — as a guest — 

Monsieur desired to remain. He tried to think 
of some French equivalent for " the shank of the 
evening." In fact, he dreaded to go back into the 
sixteenth century. The thought of that silent, an- 
cient, musty bedroom, and of the flickering candle 
that would waken ghosts within its shadows, made 
him most unwilling to turn his back upon the light 
and sound of John Tom's hospitable cabaret. So 
John Tom closed the shutters and barred the door 
with a great wooden bar; and Mme. John Tom 
produced from some adjacent pantry a large Delft 
platter of dehcious sandwiches cut thin, together 



156 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

with some radishes and fruit. La Belle Rose put 
away her sewing. The pianist ran his fingers 
through his hair and rolled a cigarette. 

" Can you not play for me," ^said I, " your fine 
national air, La Brahangonnef I have heard it only 
once, and wish that I could learn it." 

The cigarette was swiftly laid aside, and the first 
few bars of martial music crashed out from the keys. 
Even this battered old piano could not rob of its 
power that splendid song which Campenhout com- 
posed to fit the stirring words by Jenneval, who fell 
soon after at the barricades. Americans have learned 
from Englishmen to think the Belgians tame and 
thoroughly unwarlike. This is because the Belgian 
troops at Waterloo broke when the French first 
smote the allied forces under Wellington's command. 
But these Belgians were at heart the partisans of 
Napoleon and they longed for his success, while they 
disliked the English. Why should they oppose the 
Emperor, who was to them a hero and a liberator? 
Thackeray well knew the truth when he wrote that 
marvellous chapter in Vanity Fair, If any one is 
given to think lightly of the Belgians, let him read 
the records of the year 1830, when the stubborn 



BRUSSELS AND MALINES 157 

Dutch were assailed so fiercely by the Belgian revo- 
lutionists as to startle them from their stolidity and 
at last lead Europe to insist on Belgium's independ- 
ence. In the blood and fury of that year La Braban- 
gonne was born. 

The pianist, no longer languid, made his instru- 
ment roll out the battle-song. La Belle Rose began 
the words. John Tom chimed in, and then Mme. 
John Tom. The incongruous group took on a 
certain dignity : 

Qui I'aurait cru? De I'arbitraire 
Consacrant les affreux projets, 
Sur nous de rairain sanguinaire 
Un prince a lance les boulets ! 

C'en est fait ! Oui, Beiges, tout change, 

Avec Nassau plus d'indigne traite ! 
La mitraille a brise I'Orange 
Sur I'arbre de la Liberte ! 

The crash and thunder of the stern refrain are 
followed by a few chords of the " Marseillaise," won- 
derfully interwoven with Campenhout's own music, 
as if to show that Belgium's desperate fight for free- 
dom were but the final scene in that great patriotic 
drama which France began when it sounded the toc- 
sin of revolution in the annus mirabilis, 1793. 



158 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

The pianist went on from verse to verse, himself 
singing as he played. I caught the air and some- 
thing of the inspiration, and sang with all the resb 
of them. There was a roar of sound in that small 
room. 

Of a sudden came a sharply vicious blow upon the 
outer door — a sound as of a rifle-butt. We left 
off singing and there came a hush that you could 
feel, 

" Ouvrez, au nom de la loi ! " 

Such was the order, given by a hoarse voice in the 
street. M. John Tom unbarred his door. In the 
dim light I could perceive a stocky man in military 
uniform. Behind him, the Belgian army was repre- 
sented by three soldiers armed with rifles. The leader 
entered, and with him John Tom conferred in a low 
voice. I could make out the words apres dix heures 
. . . ahsolwment defendu. Obviously we had smashed 
the Belgian code to pieces by our patriotic 
Schwdrmerei, I thought I ought to give John Tom 
a little help. I went forward to the personage in 
uniform. 

" M. le Capitaine, the establishment of M. John 
Tom was duly closed at ten o'clock. I am a stranger. 



BRUSSELS AND MALINES 159 

his private guest, and I was learning the words and 
music of La Brabangonne, one of the finest of all 
national airs." 

M. le Capitaine — he was probably a high private 
or at most a corporal — bowed with much gravity 
and seemed pleased by his promotion to the higher 
rank. It is only in Georgia and Kentucky that mili- 
tary honours are acquired at birth. 

" We should be much pleased if M. le Capitaine 
would enter and partake of some slight refreshment, 
now that he done us the honour of calling." 

M. le Capitaine came in and shut the door. He 
sniffed the sandwiches afar off, and was soon devour- 
ing them with much apparent satisfaction. 

" As we were singing La Brahan^onne, perhaps 
you would drink a demi-Moidin to Belgium and its 
proud traditions." 

Doubtless it is a dusty task patrolling the streets 
and squares ; and doubtless the army regulations in 
Belgium are comfortably elastic. At any rate, M. 
le Capitaine went to the door and spoke winged words 
to his brave followers. Presently we heard their 
tramping heels upon the trottoir, dying in the 
distance. 



160 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

The demi-Moulin disappeared, and others followed 
it. M. le Capitaine removed his kepi, unbuckled his 
belt, and made himself at home. He spoke with fer- 
vour of I'Amerique, which apparently he restricted 
to Brazil. He ate many radishes. At the hour of 
eleven-thirty he was standing on a chair beside the 
old piano and was leading all of us in the thundering 
refrain : 

La mitraille a bri-i-se I'Ora-a-an-ge-e-e 
Sur I'arbre de la Liberte ! 

• ••••'•• 

The next morning, after a sixteenth century break- 
fast, I returned to Brussels, having settled my hotel 
bill — tout compris — for the sum of three francs 
and a half. (Economico-sociological note: If the 
inhabitants of Malines are chiefly paupers, it is be- 
cause they are still charging sixteenth century prices 
in the present year of grace.) I may not again 
behold Malines, but the memory of it is a grateful 
one. No doubt Malines is officially beneath the sway 
of the Cardinal-Primate of All Belgium; but in my 
thoughts of it, the quaint old city will remain for- 
ever the hereditary principality of my genial friend, 
the good John Tom. 



VII 

LIVERPOOL 

There is one European city which nearly every 
travelling American at some time or other visits, but 
which he never really knows. This is Liverpool, the 
front door of Europe, — ianua Baiarum — and to the 
vast majority of tourists the front door only. When 
the huge steamer heaves its great side against 
the slanting gangways of the Landing Stage, 
and the voyager sets his feet firmly upon them with 
the keen joy of being once more on land, his 
thought is not of Liverpool, but leaps at once to 
bourns beyond this dull grey sky and this maze of 
dingy streets. 

And so, after he has had his amicable two-minute 
interview with the British customs inspector, who 
obligingly sticks little labels on the luggage and 
blandly ignores the half-concealed cigars that must 
last for many a long day in this land of poor to- 

^ This chapter is reproduced with some alterations and additions 
from the author's What is Good English and Other Essays (New 
York, 1899), now out of print. 

11 



162 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

bacco, the American jumps into a contiguous four- 
wheeler and rattles on his way, with high thoughts 
and a happy heart. He may sometimes, to be sure, 
partake of a hasty meal at the Adelphi Hotel, where 
he will be served by the most insolent German waiters 
that can be found in Europe; but this will be the 
extent of his experience with Liverpool. In an hour 
or two he will be crossing over the ferry to Birken- 
head to visit Chester, with its double-decked streets 
and lustrous ivies, and beautiful stretches of green- 
ery ; or he will be rechning luxuriously in a well- 
padded railway carriage, speeding along between ver- 
dant hedgerows and poppy-sprinkled meadows, with 
the fascinating zest of one whose vacation is still be- 
fore him, whose letter of credit is still untouched, and 
who is eagerly anticipating all the undefined, mys- 
terious delights of mighty London. 

But to him, Liverpool itself is unimportant. It is 
not particularly old. It is not " historical." The 
guide-books tell of nothing there which seems espe- 
cially attractive. It is just a big commonplace, un- 
interesting British town, with commerce, shipping, 
railway facilities, and a large but not distinguished 
population. Why should a tourist who has yet to 



LIVERPOOL 163 

visit historic England and all the Continent waste 
any time in Liverpool? And in fact he does n't. 

Yet there is quite another side to this. There are 
some travellers who, while fully capable of drawing 
inspiration from historic scenes, and of appreciating 
all the glories of tower and castle and cathedral, are 
still beset by a desire to study human beings also, and 
who find these no less interesting than the storied 
reHcs of the past. They like to prowl about in un- 
famihar comers, to chat with the casual native, to 
sit in the public parks and watch the unconscious 
throng, to see the popular amusements, and, in other 
words, to understand the daily life and thought and 
habits of the men and women who make up the mass 
of every nation. And after they have gone about 
for a while, they manage to divest themselves of that 
beautifully American conception of what foreign 
travel really means, which has been cleverly epito- 
mised as " rushing madly from one strange bed to 
another with a perpetual cinder in one's eye." They 
think it better in the end to see a little and to see it 
thoroughly, and thus to bring home some definite 
food for thought, rather than to bewilder their brains 
and memories with a mad mirage in which palaces 



164 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

and prisons, cafes and castles, time-tables and buffet- 
restaurants, are all whirling for ever in a wild and 
, quite inextricable dance. 

To those who have made at last this valuable dis- 
covery, the present writer earnestly commends the 
town of Liverpool as having claims upon their time. 
It is here that one may get to know the modern 
Briton as he is to-day, unglorified by any romantic 
halo from the past. When you see him in the shadow 
of the great Abbey, or on the terrace of the Houses, 
or in the cloisters of old Canterbury, or by the peace- 
ful ripple of the Avon, or when you are yourself 
under the potent spell which Oxford casts upon the 
imagination, it is not the average Briton of to-day 
that you are contemplating. 

You behold unconsciously in him the representa- 
tive of a mighty race — the race that is both Eng- 
land's and our own, the race that was born to build 
and civilise and conquer; and however commonplace 
he may really be, he carries with him something of 
the glamour that makes the Anglo-Saxon heart all 
over this terrestrial globe experience a responsive 
thrill at the names of Runnimede, and Stratford, 
and Westminster, and Waterloo. 







O 






LIVERPOOL 165 

And so if you wish to know the modern every-day 
Briton entirely 'per se, and to understand him as he 
actually is, you must be sure to catch him in some such 
place as Liverpool, where his environment is one that 
is in harmony with his actual temperament, and is not 
romantic nor yet steeped in memories of the past; 
but where you will perceive with a clear, achromatic 
vision the creature as he really is — a stodgy, pursy, 
pig-headed, obstinate, immovable, masterful, tena- 
cious creature — a creature to make you despair of 
him for his crass philistinism, and admire him be- 
yond the power of expression for his inherent force 
and illimitable efficiency. 

Therefore, if perchance a tourist whose experience 
is one of several seasons, and who finds pleasure in 
pursuing the Culturgeschichte, ever comes to read 
these pages, let him make a note of my advice. 
When next he lands in Liverpool, he is not to hurry 
on to other and more superficially attractive places ; 
but he is to call his cab and leisurely betake himself 
to Mr. Russell's excellent hotel in Church Street, — 
which is one of the best-kept inns the present writer 
has ever found in any country, — and let him there 
commit his luggage to the porter and his appetite to 



166 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

the personage who rules the cosey little breakfast- 
room. And after he has eaten of the light and 
spongy muffins, and done justice to the succulent 
chops that show the loving touch of the hissing 
grill, and after he has disposed of other plain but 
satisfying British viands, and has soothed his spirit 
with one of his remaining American cigars, then let 
him ramble out into the highways, past the velvet 
greensward of what was once the pro-cathedral gar- 
den and the quaint little brown church itself, and let 
him keep his eyes wide open for the incidents and 
oddities of Liverpudlian life. 

He will see uncounted thousands of the Britons 
who are quite unknown to fame, who have no share 
in parliaments or pageants, who are not even mem- 
bers of the county yeomanry, who do not legislate 
or serve as soldiers, but who just make their daily 
bread in shops and warehouses, and who have good 
digestions and a happy absence of imagination. 
He will read their business signs couched in the neo- 
British dialect of to-day inviting him to enter and 
purchase, or to pay an especial visit to the house of 
" Liverpool's Leading Booters." He will ramble 
through Williamson Square, the Bowery of Liver- 



LIVERPOOL 167 

pool, where they do such things and they say such 
things every evening in the week, and where he may 
attend a " smoking concert," at which he will be asked 
to sing a ditty when his turn comes around. From 
the ditties which others sing in these caves of har- 
mony, he can get some knowledge of the ideals that 
belong to the humbler Liverpudlians. For example, 
I inferred from certain songs that to drive a tram is 
a somewhat aristocratic employment, uniting ease 
with luxury. For example, — and this, I am sorry to 
say, is the only fragment that has remained with me 
— there was a chorus in which everybody j oined with 
a tremendous thumping of beer-mugs. It ran: 

No more getting up at half -past six, 

Climbing up a ladder with a hod full of bricks; 

No more clay pipes, nothing but cigars. 
Now I am a driver in the tramway cars ! 

Songs which celebrated relief from toil seemed to 
touch the deepest chord in these rough audiences. 
There was one which was peculiarly delightful. The 
v/ords of it were droned out slowly and almost pain- 
fully until the word " six " was uttered, when the re- 
maining lines were rattled off joyously and as fast 
as they could be sung. 



168 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

I 've worked eight hours to-day. 

And I think I 've earned my pay. 

"When the clock strikes six — 

Then down go the bricks. 

And I wonH work a half a minute longer! 

I am pleased to observe near the Prince's Park 
two small dissenting chapels that are evidently rivals 
in the work of saving souls; for each has a large 
tin sign inviting spiritual custom. Both salute the 
wayfarer with " Welcome All ! " but one describes 
its exercises alliteratively as " Brief, Bright, and 
Brotherly," while the other, with perhaps a pro- 
founder psychological insight into human nature, 
says nothing about the brightness or the brotherli- 
ness, but gets down to a definite basis on the ques- 
tion of brevity in announcing (as though it were a 
surgical operation) that " All is Over in One Hour," 
adding still more reassuringly, " Sermon Positively 
Only Fifteen Minutes." 

Then there is that picturesquely named locality, 
the Back Goree, which I once innocently supposed 
to be the lair of pirates, and crossed by noisome 
lanes, and filled with the haunts of the evil, but in 
which an actual inspection disclosed nothing more 
terrifying than a few mouldy naval stores, and no 



LIVERPOOL 169 

one more formidable than a beery mariner, who 
stood in the door of an eating-house chewing a 
long, yellow straw. This eating-house has a red 
and white sign, which displays the names of the 
viands obtainable there, among them " Hot Pot," 
'' Raspberry Sandwiches," " Eccles Cakes," and 
other (to me) unknown British delicacies. I have 
often wished that I could eat some Hot Pot and an 
Eccles Cake, but somehow my gastronomic courage 
has always failed me, bhghted perhaps by the warm 
breath of cabbage-soup, whose odour gushes vio- 
lently and perpetually through the open doorway. 
He who is equally timorous and unenterprising can 
find a safer place for tKe satisfaction of his appetite 
at the Bear's Paw, a vast and flourishing restau- 
rant, whose menu is printed on a piece of brown 
paper about as large as a horse-blanket, and is 
as full of capital letters and exclamation-points 
as an American newspaper at election time. One 
does not readily grasp the full meaning of such 
capitalised warnings as " No Follows of Aspara- 
gus ! " but anyone with a sense of style can appre- 
ciate the Tacitean brevity of the elliptical note, 
" Hot Mashed Goes with the Joint." And — well, 



170 ^ THE NEW BAEDEKER 

there is a good deal of ethnic instruction to be 
gleaned quietly in the streets of Liverpool, and 
what has been set forth above is given only by way 
of illustration. 

Some years ago I happened to be spending a 
little time there, having arrived a few days in ad- 
vance of the sailing of my steamer. It was not the 
first visit, nor the second, nor the third; and so the 
hours passed rather slowly, and when the evening 
came I turned to the theatres in quest of amuse- 
ment and diversion. Oddly enough, at both the lead- 
ing houses the stage was held by plays relating to 
American manners. At the first a drama whose 
name I cannot now recall was billed as " A Thrill- 
ing Picture of Far Western Life ! " From the ad- 
vertisement it appeared that the scene was laid, with 
a slight geographical misfit, in Denver, Nebraska, 
and by an excess of generosity on the part of the 
playwright two villains were provided — one being 
Colonel Esek Slodge and the other plain Joe Wil- 
liams. A foot-note added the enticing promise, 
" In the Fifth Act, Joe Williams is Hanged in Full 
Sight of the Audience ! " I rather wished to see that 



LIVERPOOL 171 

play; but somehow or other the hanging of Joe 
Williams appeared to lack the essential element of 
cheerfulness, and so I turned to the other theatre as 
a pis aller. 

Its bill-boards vividly announced the " Protracted 
and Expensive Engagement of the Celebrated 
American Actor, Mr. Blank Blank," with a company 
described as " A Galaxy of the Best Histrionic 
Talent in the States." Furthermore, one was in- 
formed (in smaller letters) that " all parts being 
filled by Americans, this presentation affords a vivid, 
realistic picture of contemporary American life, as 
delineated in that most famous of all American plays, 
entitled Uncle ToirCs Cahin.^^ After reading this, 
and especially the allusion to " contemporary Ameri- 
can life," there was really nothing to do but to get 
a ticket and go; and the expenditure of five shil- 
lings having secured one of the best seats in the 
house, the present writer saw the curtain rise 
promptly at eight o'clock, disclosing the family 
mansion of Mr. Shelby in Kentucky, with the negro 
quarters adjacent to it. 

The scene was one of surpassing beauty and, above 
all, of realism. The Shelby mansion was of white 



172 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

marble with Italian pillars, and it was embowered in 
palm-trees and other tropical foliage, while far away 
in the background stretched the blue waters of an in- 
land sea not usually recorded on the maps, upon 
which were to be descried a few stray gondolas ; 
for every one is well aware that the gondola is a 
favourite means of locomotion with the natives of 
Kentucky. The scene was so very beautiful, in fact, 
that one at first forgot to be surprised at the close 
proximity of the negro quarters to the white marble 
mansion ; for the distance between the two was, at 
a liberal estimate, six paces, so that the Shelby 
family were probably at times quite well informed 
of the progress of their domestic cookery. But it 
was soon obvious just why the quarters were so 
near the mansion. It was to enable the Shelbys 
to glut themselves with negro minstrelsy at any 
hour of the day and night; for presently the 
" hands " emerged and sang a hymn, a proceeding 
which they repeated at regular intervals, like a 
cuckoo-clock, all through the act. And whenever 
they did so, the Shelbys suspended any other oc- 
cupation and struck attitudes all over the place and 
listened. Mr. Shelby was a fine figure of a man. 



LIVERPOOL 173 

He wore jack-boots and white duck trousers, while 
Mrs. Shelby at three p. m. appeared in a low-necked 
dress and a tiara of precious stones. When it sub- 
sequently transpired that the Shelbys were deeply 
in debt, and that the white marble mansion was 
mortgaged up to its fastigium, I could n't help 
thinking that Mrs. Shelby might have raised a Httle 
money on her tiara instead of weakly consenting 
to the sale of George Harris and Eliza, and of poor 
Uncle Tom, all of whom presently appeared while 
the hands were singing their seventh hymn. George 
Harris was undoubtedly a typical mulatto slave, 
because the play-bill said so; but if I had seen him 
anywhere else I should have taken him for Albert 
Chevalier doing a coster turn. Uncle Tom was 
nice and black. When he was summoned to appear, 
in order that he might be informed that he had been 
sold to the heartless Haley, he came directly from 
working in the fields, and he had white cotton 
gloves, such as were doubtless always worn at the 
South by the better class of slaves when hoeing 
corn and digging sweet potatoes. He had a fine 
deep voice and a rich Whitechapel accent; and 
when he was informed that he had been sold to 



174 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

Haley, he observed with some emotion that it was 
very 'ard. But there was no help for it; so he had 
to go, but not before he, too, had sung a hymn, and 
had listened to the rendering of still another by his 
fellow-slaves. 

George and Eliza, however, had more spirit than 
Uncle Tom; for they resolved to run away; and 
they did so while Haley was obligingly looking at 
the inland sea and the gondolas, and perhaps com- 
posing poetry; since he failed to get an inkling of 
their intention, though it was discussed by them in 
a loud and carrying tone of voice. When he did 
discover it, they had already gone, and then he 
promptly called for bloodhounds, and set off in hot 
pursuit, waiting, however, to hear the field hands 
give a rendering of one final hymn, and also the 
encores for which the audience very kindly called, 
wishing perhaps to give Eliza and her child a better 
start. 

The beginning of the second act revealed a tavern 
on the banks of the Ohio River, to which place Eliza 
had succeeded in escaping. The tavern was simply 
but sufficiently furnished with one deal table and 
two chairs, and it had a large window which com- 



LIVERPOOL 175 

manded a sweeping view of the river. And here 
one discovered a remarkable fact as to the varia- 
tions of climate that can be found in Kentucky; 
for whereas the Shelby estate, when Eliza left it, 
was enjoying tropical summer, the broad Ohio, on 
the borders of the same State, was full of icebergs. 
Of course it is possible to suppose that she had con- 
sumed six months or so in reaching the river, and 
had thus given the season time to change; but the 
speed with which she rushed in seemed to render 
this hypothesis untenable. Haley and the blood- 
hounds were on her track; and already a large 
poster on the wall of the tavern proclaimed " One 
Hundred Pounds Reward for a Runaway Slave," 
from whick it appeared that Kentuckians prefer the 
English monetary system. As soon as Eliza saw 
the poster, she felt faint and sat down on one of 
the chairs ; and when Phineas Fletcher presently en- 
tered, she confided in him at once, because he was 
a Quaker and said " thee " and " thou," and because, 
as she told him, he had so good and kind a face. 
I should myself have taken him for Jesse James ; but 
Eliza knew her man, and when the bloodhounds were 
presently heard baying, he shut her up in a large 



176 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

closet for safety. Haley soon appeared with his myr- 
midons and two bloodhounds. The bloodhounds were 
very large and fat, and they inspired real terror — 
not in Phineas Fletcher, but in Haley and his minions, 
who were obviously afraid lest the animals should 
lean up against the scenery and go to sleep ; so 
that it became necessary from time to time to tread 
furtively on their tails to keep them awake and bay- 
ing. Haley had some talk with Phineas, and pres- 
ently wanted to look into the closet; but when Jie 
grew insistent, Phineas, like a true Quaker, pulled 
a pistol out of each boot and stopped him. Later 
the myrmidons attempted the same thing, and then 
Phineas pulled two more pistols from somewhere 
down the back of his neck and stopped them. 
Then Haley went out to get more myrmidons, and 
Phineas had to give up ; so he rushed Eliza out of 
the house, and she ran across the river on the ice, 
just as in the book, her passage being visible from 
the window. The audience naturally felt a good deal 
of sympathy with Eliza; but for my part I was 
more concerned for Haley and the myrmidons, since 
in spite of the rigour of the climate which filled the 
river with icebergs, they were all clad in linen dus- 



LIVERPOOL 177 

ters and overalls, and I am sure their legs must have 
been very cold. 

Later still, Eliza and George were united; and 
being driven to bay, they made a gallant stand for 
freedom in the mountains, aided by Phineas. The 
lofty peak on which they rallied was not less than 
seven feet high, and when Haley and Tom Loker 
and the myrmidons and Lawyer Marks attacked 
them, Phineas shed a perfect shower of pistols from 
every conceivable part of his person. Haley's gang 
also had at least two pistols apiece, and both parties 
fired steadily at one another for several minutes, at 
a distance of six paces, with no harm to any one, 
which served rather to discredit Kentuckian marks- 
manship. Somehow or other, in the end, after every- 
body had used up all his cartridges, George and 
Eliza escaped down the rear of the peak, and then 
Lawyer Marks led in a large mouse-coloured ass, 
on which he expected to ride away. The ass kicked 
various members of the party and excited uncon- 
trollable mirth in the audience. It seemed rather 
awkward in its movements, however, and presently 
the skin over one of its fetlocks burst open and 

made evident the fact that the ass was surrepti- 

12 



178 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

tiously wearing corduroy trousers and patent-leather 
shoes. 

Still further along in the play we were introduced 
to the luxurious abode of St. Clare in the city of 
New Orleans, and to the details of his domestic 
menage. A good deal of the action took place in 
the garden, a noble plaisaunce enclosed in a dense 
thicket of fir-trees, and, with contiguous mountains 
topped with snow. Miss Ophelia was a very promi- 
nent figure in these scenes. She was a very ample 
lady, with a bunch of keys at her waist, and a rubi- 
cund countenance, and her language was intimately 
suggestive of New England ; for she said " How 
shiftless ! " at least once in every two minutes ; 
though sometimes, when she varied the form and said, 
" Now, that 's really very shiftless, you know ! " or 
" Drat it, you 're really quite too shiftless ! " one 
could n't help suspecting her of being secretly an 
Anglomaniac. She was greatly concerned with the 
general disorder of what she called the 'ouse, and 
went about picking up everything that anybody 
dropped, except their Ks. St. Clare was also an 
interesting character, though it was darkly hinted 
that he was given to dissipation; and, in fact, he 



LIVERPOOL 179 

showed this symbolically by parting his hair in the 
middle and always appearing with a cigarette, which 
he was continually allowing to go out and then 
I'elighting. Once, however, after he had been no 
doubt particularly wild, he came in, slapping his brow 
and exclaiming, " Oh, my head ! " and then Uncle 
Tom dealt with him effectually. 

" Mahster," said Tom — who, by the way, always 
wore his hat in the drawing-room — " do you know 
where such courses hend? " 

" No," said St. Clare rather feebly. 

" Then let me tell you, Mahster," said Uncle Tom 
with his deepest voice. " They hend in 'Ell ! " 

After this St. Clare smoked no more cigarettes 
and always parted his hair on one side. But he 
must have had a moral relapse, for when he was 
brought in one evening, stabbed, it was stated 
openly that the affair had taken place in " a 
drinking-bar." 

The later scenes were very harrowing. At the 
command of the brutal Legree, Uncle Tom was 
whipped several times in each scene, and Sambo and 
Quimbo, who did it, always added a fresh horror to 
the spectacle by dancing a breakdown before be- 



180 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

ginning, and by singing at least two songs after 
they had finished. When Tom finally succumbed, 
and Legree was arrested for the murder of St. Clare, 
all the Shelby family and the Shelby field hands, 
and Topsy, and Haley, and Lawyer Marks appeared 
in some unaccountable way and sang " The Sweet 
Bye and Bye." 

The last scene showed George and Eliza safe on 
Canadian soil. Greorge was full of emotion. He 
announced that at last he had reached a land over 
which the flag of Hengland floated, where 'ealth and 
'ope were possible to he very one, and where, as hall 
men knew, Britons never, never could be slaves. As 
he said this he took out of one of his coat-tails a 
large cotton pocket-handkerchief which displayed the 
British emblem, and spread it under his chin like a 
porous-plaster. This was the cue for the orchestra, 
which struck up "God Save the King;" where- 
upon every one in the audience arose, and the play 
ended amid great enthusiasm. 

A large and portly Briton who breathed very hard 
had sat beside me, and throughout the performance 
had incidentally occupied half my chair as well as 
all his own. As we were about to leave, he caught my 




•'Rum lot, these Yankees, ain't they?" 



LIVERPOOL 181 

eye, and at once remarked with an air of intense 

conviction : 

" Rum lot, these Yankees, ain't they? " 

And remembering my countrymen as they had just 

been dramatically depicted, I said that I thought 

they were. 



PART TWO 

I 

PORTLAND, MAINE 

De. SamueI/ Johnson once said to the attentive 
Boswell, that for him the current of his life was at 
its full whenever he was driven briskly along Fleet 
Street in a hackney-coach. This was all very well 
for Dr. Samuel Johnson. He happened to be a 
purblind, corpulent person, unable to see very far 
beyond his nose, and afflicted with an asthmatic 
shortness of breath which made him gasp and wheeze 
whenever he was obliged to walk. Years of garret- 
life, of tavern talk and of London fog had caused 
his appreciation of Nature in the large to become 
atrophied, just as the nicety of his tastes had become 
blunted. Hence, to rattle along over the cobble- 
stones in a stuffy coach was to him the very acme 
of delight. If, at the end of his drive, he found 
awaiting him a platter of stewed hare unduly 
" high," accompanied by a stout loaf, plenty of 
rancid butter and a steaming jorum of strong tea, 
he felt that he had really reached Elysium. 



PORTLAND, MAINE 183 

Now, if I were a person of sufficient importance 
to have a Boswell, I should set forth to him an ideal 
very different from that of the Great Cham. Of 
all the places on the habitable earth, where is it 
that one can get the keenest sense of what is good 
in life? Where will his blood race through his veins 
most joyously? Where will a glorious exhilaration 
make him feel as though he were walking upon air, 
with a sense of supreme well-being, of healthful, 
zestful happiness just because he is alive and there? 
Believe a normal human being of nomadic tastes 
when he tells you that all of these sensations will 
come upon you overwhelmingly, if you will only walk 
on Congress Street in Portland, Maine, about the 
end of June. The sunny fields of Kent are very 
fine. The roses of the Riviera and the blue of the 
Italian lakes are charming. The palms of Santa 
Catalina sway with a seductive fascination. The 
Rockies and the Alps are majestic in the boldness 
of tlieir beauty. The long, dim vistas of the 
Schwarzwald murmur almost lyrically through the 
leaves that make of every tree a deep-green bower. 
Yet these may all go hang when I recall the buoy- 
ancy of soul which comes over me on Congress Street 
in Portland, Maine. 



184 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

The truth is that certain places are meant to be 
enjoyed by poets only, while others are supremely 
satisfying to the wholly unimaginative nature. 
Thus, the Lago di Garda would give endless pleas- 
ure to a sensitive, unworldly spirit such as Shelley 
— that beautiful and ineffectual angel of the lumi- 
nous wings. On the other hand, the Hon. Enoch 
P. Scruggs of Altoona, Pennsylvania, and kis good 
lady and the Misses Scruggs, would ask nothing 
better of Providence than a long sojourn at Asbury 
Park. Yet few of us are really poets, and some 
of us are more exacting than the famille Scruggs. 
We like to have our heads well up in air but at 
the same time to keep our feet planted firmly on 
the solid earth. The actual and usual, seen against 
a background of romance — this is what appeals 
to me, at least, far more than either abstract and 
unchanging beauty, or the crude monotony of the 
commonplace. Fundamentally, this middle ground, 
when you come to think of it, is attractive and ap- 
pealing just because it is a microcosmic reproduc- 
tion of human life itself — life as it actually is and 
as it has been made for us, not by poets nor yet by 
plodders, but by the God of Things as They Are. 



PORTLAND, MAINE 185 

Here is the Horatian philosophy of the aurea 
mediocritas. Mediocritas — yes, but always aurea. 
That sagacious Roman who has seemed to every 
age to be its own possession, who is to-day more 
truly modern than even Mr. Bernard Shaw, and 
who will remain eternally the genial friend and easy- 
going monitor of all mankind — Horace, I say, 
knew well that contrast is the very essence of 
en j oyment. 

Sed neque qui Capua Romam petit imbre lutoque 
Adspersus volet in caupona vivere; nee qui 
Frigus collegit furnos et balnea laudat. 

Harmony is the more ravishing when it follows 
discord; beauty is the more entrancing when it 
stands out radiantly beside ugliness; and grains of 
gold gleam brightest when one finds them in a lump 
of clay. So let us learn to view the complicated 
web of human life that we may at last arrive at 
the supreme philosophy of enjoyment which can 
derive exquisite pleasure anywhere from the con- 
trasts which meet us in the study of mankind, from 
the analysis of anything, from the gleams of 
humour, the subtle tints of personality, the ways 
and manners of one's fellow men and women, and 



186 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

the picturesqueness of the background, whatever it 
may be. If you have acquired this priceless gift, 
you can be happy even at Ulubrse — or Chicago. 
The smallest hamlet or the largest city — it is quite 
the same. Everywhere the human comedy goes on 
forever. As for myself, I think that I have learned 
the lesson — provided only that I can be sure of 
getting well-cooked meals, however simple, and pro- 
vided also, that a certain brand of cigarettes — 
caporal superieur, paqTiet rose — be granted me as 
a concomitant to meditation. 

But to return to Congress Street in June. The 
sky above is intensely blue. A soft yet bracing 
breeze blows up the street from the undulating 
waters of the Bay. It flutters the awnings and 
makes the flags stream proudly on their staifs. 
Everything is as fresh and sweet and as clearly out- 
lined as though Portland had been created on that 
very morning instead of much more than two cen- 
turies ago. This is not really newness, much less 
rawness. It is the neat, self-respecting trimness of 
a city — simplex munditiis — that is still American 
to its very core, with suggestive touches of Old 
England to give it dignity and the softened charm 



PORTLAND, MAINE 187 

of age. Looking down from a gradual slope is one 
of the most delightful of hotels, nestling among 
trees, and with a broad veranda that invites you 
to be quite at home. Yet if you choose, you can 
turn into Oak Street and take up your abode in 
" chambers " and be as comfortable as you will, 
a VAnglaise. 

The spreading trees with their half -arched green- 
ery are one of the great charms of Portland. Turn 
off just where you like, and you will gaze down 
shaded streets to which the sunshine finds its way 
seductively through the foliage. The houses — fine 
old mansions — are set in velvet lawns dappled by 
the shadows of their elms and oaks. And every 
little while you will come upon a park with limpid 
pools of water and beds of flowers and the spray 
of fountains. Or, if you care to take another course, 
you will find yourself upon a strip of turf entitled 
the Eastern Promenade, which overlooks the sparkle 
of the sea. Only a few antique and interesting can- 
non share the place with you; and if you are so 
fortunate as to wander thither by the side of a 
charming girl, you may admire her to your heart's 
content, while the wind, with caressing touch, loosens 



188 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

the little fluffs of hair about her face and makes her 
colour come and go bewitchingly. And what you 
say to her no one will ever hear, except perhaps the 
birds that twitter in the tree-tops. 

But it is Congress Street that calls one back — 
Congress Street, with its throngs of people moving 
busily up and down the sidewalks, its handsome 
shops, its general air of thrift and order and pros- 
perity. Every one you meet has clear bright eyes 
and a touch of incipient tan. Every one is well and 
cheerful and alive. You are very much alive your- 
self, and are every moment thanking Heaven for it. 
You look into the windows where the jewellers dis- 
play their dainty wares. You purchase great masses 
of carnations at a price so trifling as to make the 
flowers seem a gift from the Portldnderinn who 
hands them to you with a frank and friendly smile. 
You are ready to do anything, to go anywhere, to 
laugh aloud and even to burst forth into song, be- 
cause, as I said, you are so very much alive. Small 
wonder that Anthony Trollope wrote as he did of 
Portland and its people nearly fifty years ago. Mark 
the healthy and roast-beefy tone of the approving 
Briton : 



JUtM. 




73 
:3 



O 

Oh 



o 






PORTLAND, MAINE 189 

Portland has an air of supreme plenty. . . . The faces of the 
people tell of three regular meals of meat a day, and of digestive 
powers in proportion. O happy Portlanders! If they only knew 
their own good fortime! They get up early and go to bed early. 
The women are comely and sturdy, able to take care of themselves, 
without any fal-lal of chivalry, and the men are sedate, obhging, and 
industrious. I saw the young girls in the streets coming home from 
their tea-parties at nine o'clock, many of them alone, and all with 
some basket in their hands, which betokened an evening not passed 
absolutely in idleness. No fear there of unruly questions on the way, 
or of insolence from the ill-conducted of the other sex. AU was, or 
seemed to be, orderly, sleek, and imobtrusive. Probably, of all 
modes of hfe that are allotted to man by his Creator, life such as this 
is the most happy. 

Dear old Anthony knew a thing or two. In Trol- 
lope's time, Mr. Cordes had not yet spread his 
tables for the hungry visitor, nor was the fine 
hotel there, with its admirable chef; but Portland 
was well catered to, we may be sure. And even then 
the sun shone bright on Congress Street and its 
historic monument. Before TroUope was born — 
in fact as early as 1807 — the Rev. Dr. Dwight 
described Portland as " beautiful and brilliant." 
Dr. Dwight may not have been an authority on 
beauty and brilliancy, but I know that this time he 
was correct. 

There is a good deal of history associated with 
Portland, but I enjoy this chiefly because it gives 



190 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

a fitting background for the living present. That 
is what history is for, just as that is the true excuse 
for architecture. I hke to think of Preble, and I 
like to look at the fine structures of St. Dominick's 
and St. Luke's as I rove about the town; but the 
trolley-cars are also an essential part of it, and so 
are the trees, and the shops, and all the rest. 

If you like, you may visit the house where Long- 
fellow was born; but I have never myself done so. 
It seems rather foolish to make pilgrimages to the 
birthplaces of distinguished men. You are certain 
to be disappointed. There is Shakespeare's — at 
least, it is conj ecturally liis ; a wretched, squalid 
hole of a garret, which only makes you sorry for the 
poet. And there is the birthplace of Robert Burns, 
transformed into a peep-show of tawdry " relics." 
What does it matter where a man was born.'' There 
is no particular merit in being bom. ' No one who 
is born has any choice in the matter. He is bom 
just because he has to be. The real thing to con- 
sider is what he does with himself after he has been 
born. I feel a reverential thrill when I enter Sir 
Walter Scott's noble book-lined study at Abbotsford, 
and see everything just as it was when he was still 



PORTLAND, MAINE 191 

alive — his leathern chair, his desk at which he 
wrote each morning before his guests were out of bed. 
But where he was born is of no earthly consequence. 
Shakespeare and Scott and Burns and Longfellow 
must all have looked alike when they were babies — 
rather red, and given to squalling, and doubtless 
smelling of sour milk. No ; Longfellow's birthplace 
I will not visit. I Hke to think that when he was a 
man, he, too, walked on Congress Street wearing 
rather gorgeous waistcoats. But to my mind, Port- 
land is not so much an object of admiration because 
of Longfellow, as Longfellow is to be envied because 
he had the good luck to be born in Portland. 

Yet although it is not worth while to seek out 
Longfellow's birthplace — which, in fact, is situated 
in some remote back street — one may derive a cer- 
tain amount of amusement in what is everywhere 
known as " the Longfellow Home." This old man- 
sion of dark brick with a strip of lawn in front 
looks out upon Congress Street and contains a 
sort of Longfellow museum. Here the author of 
Evangeline lived during his boyhood, and here he 
wrote his first published poem at the age of thirteen. 
The place is owned by an Association, but the per- 



192 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

sons in it who show you around are volunteers — 
girls and women of various ages. 

When I made my only visit to this mansion, I 
encountered in the hallway a tall and impressive 
woman who reminded me of the two Literary Ladies 
whom Dickens has made immortal in the pages of 
Martin Chuzzlewit. In Dickens there was a pair 
of them — one the Lady with the Wig, and the 
other the Lady with a Large Cameo like a Tart, 
representing the Capitol at Washington. I should 
call this lady in the Longfellow house a Composite 
Lady, since she seemed to blend all the character- 
istics of the two ladies described by Dickens. She 
spoke in a hollow voice when she addressed me, and 
she always mentioned Longfellow as " the Poet." 
Under her guidance I saw the shoes and stockings 
of the Poet when he was a baby, the stewing-pans 
in which the Poet's food was probably prepared for 
him, the stairs down which the Poet sometimes used 
to fall, the Poet's jack-knife, innumerable articles 
upon which the Poet may have gazed, and a cheery 
wood fire such as I hope the Poet often warmed his 
shins at. 

To the second floor the Composite Lady did not 



PORTLAND, MAINE 193 

follow me; and I was left to gaze at a large collec- 
tion of feminine apparel which one of the Poet's rela- 
tives acquired. She seems to have had a good many 
clothes and some of them were rather good, though 
the fact is made perfectly apparent that, in the 
year 1812, dress-shields had not yet been invented. 
There were sundry other curiosities in the different 
rooms — not all of them relating to the Poet. A 
pleasant, tactful girl from the High School was in 
charge, and she did not think it necessary to lec- 
ture or, indeed, to say anything at all. Only once 
or twice, when I was obviously at a loss, did she 
come forward shyly and by pointing to a written 
legend or by inverting a picture, make clear that 
which had been obscure. On the whole, it is worth 
while to make this pilgrimage at least once. You 
may be lucky enough to meet the Composite Lady 
or the shy girl from the High School, and you may 
wonder ad libitum at the absurdity of heaping up 
such quantities of extraneous junk instead of trying 
to have the house appear just as it did when " the 
Poet " lived there. I am sure that Longfellow him- 
self, who had a quiet sense of humour, would be 

much amused if he could see the exhibition. 

13 



194 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

Doubtless a grocer's shop is not usually the sort 
of place where one lingers merely because it pro- 
vides a sensation of aesthetic pleasure. Yet on 
Congress Street there is a grocer's shop which has 
a singular attraction for me. In it Art has cast 
a certain glamour over Utility, as, indeed, it always 
should. In the golden period of Greek genius, the 
two were never separated. The artistic glorified 
the useful, while the useful made the artistic serve 
the needs of human life. It was only in the time of 
Aristotle that the notion of Fine Art was made 
separate and distinct; and Aristotle marks the be- 
ginning of Greek decadence. A Platonist would 
understand just why this grocer's shop attracts me, 
— and so would a mere hedonist. I admire the 
spaciousness of the place, the orderly arrangement 
of everything in it, the subordination of such usual 
wares as flour and kerosene »nd butter to the more 
tempting confections which are in themselves de- 
lightful and which can be treated with daintiness 
and delicacy. The honeycombs gleam like pale gold 
through the glass which lucently contains them. 
The cherries au marasqum, the thick white stalks 
of asparagus, the terrines of pates truffes, the jars 



PORTLAND, MAINE 195 

of Dundee jam, the dark-green olives, the luscious 
California peaches, the slim round wooden disks en- 
closing Camembert, the candied violets, the thousand 
and one trifles which make gastronomy a part of 
poetry — why on earth did Zola write a symphony 
of cheeses only, instead of a dithyramb of dainties 
that left so much out? 

But what I like most of all is the broad counter 
which runs along nearly the whole of one side, and 
which seems nearly bare, save for a few trifling hints 
of devilled crabs and other freshly prepared com- 
estibles. Two or three neat girls are standing here. 
If you merely breathe the wish, they will see that, at 
whatever hour you mention, there will be ready for 
you whole roasted chickens, or delightful ducks and 
dainty salads and lettuce-sandwiches blending their 
green leaves with the gold of their rich mayonnaise, 
— hampers, in short, packed full of things such as 
Lucullus would have loved. And why? Because, 
indeed, you are intending to take a little steamer 
and go down the Bay to picnic on one of the fasci- 
nating islands that rise above the sunlit waters, 
with great rocks and woods and winding beaches, 
while Nature's own reposeful spirit touches them 



196 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

with peace. Let us convey our wishes to one of the 
maidens — and intimate that we wish her to be very, 
very bountiful and make the hamper a marvellous 
one even for Portland, where the horn of plenty pours 
forth all the gifts of the genial goddess, Copia. 

Then, presently, let us find our way down to the 
crowded wharves, where every sort of craft is 
moored, and where, even if there be no " Spanish 
sailors with bearded lips," there is a glorious sug- 
gestion of " the beauty and the mystery of the 
ships, and the magic of the sea." To quote these 
words is to recall that one poem of Longfellow's 
which is as near perfection as anything that he 
ever wrote; and yet I am not sure whether the very 
last and final touch that makes it so beautiful does 
not come from the fact that it was written about 
Portland. 

Often I think of the beautiful town 

That is seated by the sea; 
Often in thought go up and down 
The pleasant streets of that dear old town. 
And my youth comes back to me. 
And a verse of a Lapland song 
Is haunting my memory still: 
"A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 



PORTLAND, MAINE 197 

I can see the shadowy lines of its trees. 

And catch, in sudden gleams, 
The sheen of the far-surrounding seas. 
And islands that were the Hesperides 
Of aU my boyish dreams. 
And the burden of that old song. 
It murmurs and whispers stiU: 
"A boy's will is the wind's will, 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 

I remember the black wharves and the slips. 

And the sea-tides tossing free; 
And Spanish sailors with bearded lips. 
And the beauty and mystery of the ships. 
And the magic of the sea. 

And the voice of that wayward song 
Is singing and saying still: 
"A boy's will is the wind's will. 
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." 

At the Harp swell landing, and swaying in the 
slip, is a stout little steamer, the Maquoit, which 
from its size would be mistaken in the harbour of 
Manhattan for a tug-boat. Yet please view the 
Maquoit with all respect. She has a Cap'n with a 
gold-laced cap, presiding in the pilot-house, whom 
his crew address in true naval style as " Sir." She 
has a first officer and a purser and a sufficient com- 
plement of sailors — a sturdy, self-respecting, manly 
set of men; and officially they are just as proud of 



198 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

navigating the Maquoit as though she were the 
Lusitania. 

Maybe the boat will not leave the pier on time. 
To oblige a friend of the Cap'n, the Maquoit can be 
held almost indefinitely. If a lady has asked the 
purser not to leave until she comes, and has inti- 
mated that she may be just a little late, the purser 
will tell the Cap'n, and the Cap'n's weather-beaten 
face will radiate a ready acquiescence. It is a 
friendly country, this. Every one likes to be nice 
to everybody else, and time is of no particular value. 
Meanwhile, the passengers come aboard, and 
strange-looking packages and boxes are loaded on 
the lower deck and even, at a pinch, upon the upper 
deck as well. Parcels from Portland milliners, 
crates of cackling poultry, great sides of beef, and 
perhaps a protesting pig, are mingled with articles 
of furniture and baby-carriages. For the people 
who live on the islands all the length of Casco Bay 
down to the open ocean must be nourished and made 
comfortable from Portland. You lazily view the 
loading, and admire the varied tastes of those whose 
most sacred Lares and Penates are being shipped 
on the Maquoit, And the passengers as they arrive 



PORTLAND, MAINE 199 

are worth your study too. Delightful girls ap- 
pear in simple costumes, with rosy faces and a 
touch of sun upon their shapely arms. Their white 
skirts and fluttering ribbons show bravely against 
the sober costumes of the island men, or for the 
matter of that, against the grey or dark blue of 
Outlanders like yourself. The whole scene is ani- 
mated — the rumble of the trucks, the chatter of 
the women, the splash of the restless water against 
the piles, the swaying of the little steamer, the 
breeze and sun and salt and splendour of the Bay 
beyond. So, if the Maquoit neglects the time-table, 
you do not care. Nobody cares. You are happy 
anyhow. In the cities, time is money; but up here 
in this blessed land, time is something better — 
time is pleasure and you have all the time there is. 
In the days when our great country had not yet 
expanded westward very far, men used to say " From 
Maine to Georgia " when they wished to convey a 
sense of ultimates. It is odd, but somehow or other, 
extremes have really, met in this particular antithesis. 
Maine and Georgia are very much alike in certain 
aspects of their people. The typical man of Maine 
resembles not a bit the typical New Englander as we 



200 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

are wont to think of the New Englander, He is as 
remote from the Massachusetts man as from a South 
Sea Islander, and much more agreeable than either. 
The Massachusetts man speaks with an air of sharp 
decision. He is tremendously " informing." He is 
not happy unless he can direct you or lecture you 
or instruct you. His tones, always slightly nasal, 
twang like a Jew's-harp when he talks to you. He is 
brisk, self-conscious, ill at ease, and he would rather 
like to bully you — for your own good. All these 
traits — even the twang — he inherited honestly 
from the provincial regions of Old England whence 
his dissenting forebears came. 

But the Maine man has not the slightest affinity 
with him. His speech is slow and gentle. The 
harsher consonants shade off into mere phonetic hints, 
while the liquids and the vowels are prolonged de- 
liciously. He has no twang whatever, but instead a 
pleasant drawl, precisely that of the far South. He 
does not want to teach you anything. He is not in a 
hurry. He is patient, kindly, unobtrusive. He sel- 
dom laughs aloud; but a glint of humour will come 
into his eyes and a smile will light his face. He ob- 
serves everything, but he says very little. He is not 



PORTLAND, MAINE 201 

self-conscious in the least, but wholly natural and 
simple with a dignity which comes from living close 
to Nature. Take him all in all, he is about the 
finest type of American that I know. 

I wonder for how long a time these kindly, honest, 
upright people of Maine will remain unspoiled. 
How many years must elapse before their sound, sim- 
ple qualities will feel the uneasy influences of the 
age? Even to-day, one seems to recognise a weak- 
ened moral fibre, a slight decadence, in the rising 
generation when compared with the fathers and the 
mothers. The young men and the young women are 
drifting to the towns, or at home are growing to be 
less rugged and less sound. 

While I am thinking of these things, the whistle 
of the Maquoit hoots hoarsely and the boat steams 
out into the Bay. Two lanky men are sitting near 
me in the bow ; and as we swing into the channel, 
they begin to talk in measured tones. 

" Yes," observed the elder of the two, " 't was a 
blamed queer thing. It happened in Noo York. I 
read it in one of them papers. You see, 't was like 
this. A widow woman had lost her husband an' she 
went and c'lected the insurance money from a bank," 



202 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

" What had the bank to do with it ? " inquired the 
other. 

" I d' know ; but anyhow the money was in the bank 
and she went and drawed it out. Well, the feller in 
the bank handed her the bills and she was sticking 
them in her wallet. Up in one corner of the bank 
was one of them things thet whirl around and make 
a sort of rush of air. They have 'em in banks, 
I 'm told, to keep them fellers cool in summer. Well, 
jest as the lady was poking them bills into her wal- 
let, a stream of air licked up one of 'em — th' pa- 
per said 't was a thousand dollar bill, — and ketched 
it. 'N she never noticed it till she got home and 
counted the money." 

" I guess she was put out some." 

" Well, I guess so too. But when she went back 
to th' bank, thet feller there had seen the bill and 
had kep' it for her. When she came in, he just 
forked it out as ca'm as you please." 

His listener meditated for a while. Then he 
asked : 

" Would you 'a' kep it for her an' give it back.? " 

" Oh, yes, I 'd a done just the same." He spat 
meditatively over the side. " Only 't would 'a' bin 



PORTLAND, MAINE 203 

a pull, I guess. But, you see, she was a widow 



woman." 



" Yes, it doos make a lot of diff'rence who 't is.- 
Now I found a wallet once with seven dollars and 
eighty-seven cents into it. I knew whose 't was, be- 
cause it had her name onto it. She was a good 
woman, too. I knocked off work a little earlier than 
usual an' took a car over to her house. Well, she 
was n't in. Her old aunt said I c'd leave it. I sez 
* No, mam, not till you give me my car-fares coming 
and going.' Well, now, she would n't agree. So I 
sez : * All right ; then I 'U keep the wallet till Mis' 
Brown comes and gets it.' An' so I went off with 
it an' left her there. I guess she was pretty mean." 

*' Th' old hen ! " commented the other ; yet with 
a certain philosophic calm that made the remark 
seem quite impersonal. 

But now the Maquoit has got down into the open 
Bay, past Peak's Island and Long Island, and into 
the wonderful archipelago beyond which lies the illim- 
itable ocean. There is nothing like those islands 
anywhere. Their trees are so very green; their 
beaches are so snowy white. They are just as God 



204 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

meant them to be forever, from the smallest to the 
greatest, except perhaps Orr's Island, which has 
experienced the taint of other influences. When 
Mrs. Stowe described the Pearl of Orr's Island, I 
suppose that the Pearl was really pearly. But she 
is dead and gone to-day. I have seen the present 
Pearl. She is blowsy and bold-eyed, and when I 
saw her, she was sitting in the lap of a half-drunken 
hackman. But of all the other islands, I know none 
that is not beautiful in its own way — from bleak 
Mark Island, lonely and uninhabited, to Great Che- 
beague, which is the queen of the whole group. It 
is large enough to have some good inland roads, 
so that you do not feel imprisoned by the surround- 
ing sea. Its shore is scalloped into curving strips 
of sand, or else it juts out boldly in great rocks, 
upon which the surf comes thundering, in clouds of 
spray. 

Here and there is a huge boulder that seems like 
a missile hurled from a giant's sling when the world 
was young. There is a gaunt uprooted pine beside 
it, keeping it company in its Jsolation. Here are 
grass-grown paths from which you get a glimpse 
of some slender pier running far out into the water. 



PORTLAND, INIAINE 205 

And the people are the best people in all Maine in 
their hospitality and rightness and self-respecting 
courtesy. Heaven send that they may never change ! 

Go down to the beach that faces the north end 
of Littlejohn's, and push out in a rowboat which 
answers to your slightest stroke. In half an hour 
the keel will grate gently on the pebbles of a cres- 
cent beach. The thick grass and the white birches 
come down to the very edge of the fine sand. Throw 
out your anchor there and find a place to lie on, 
with the sun streaming full upon your face and fill- 
ing you with the glory of life. It is not the sickly, 
sticky sun-fire of the cities. The fresh wind tem- 
pers its power, so that it makes your face tingle 
under its touch, and you feel a glow all through 
your veins as from some rare and wondrous wine. 
The sky above is a vault of pure sapphire through 
which now and then a gull wings its way, a fleck 
of distant white. Before you is the sea with its 
infinite murmurings. Behind you, the notes of a 
wood-bird come faintly through the trees. The 
scent of clover-blossoms mingles with the odour of 



206 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

the seaweed. You are lulled and soothed and fasci- 
nated by the beauty of it, the perfection of it, the 
wonder of it all; and you believe with a deep rever- 
ence and unfeigned thankfulness that everything is 
for the best in this very best of all possible worlds. 



n 

BOSTON 

It is not ^ven to every one to write of Boston with 
a true conception of its essential inwardness, — its 
anima or perhaps one ought to say its animula. 
Foreigners who visit it are very apt to admire it 
more than they admire any other American city; 
but their admiration is neither unbiased nor intelli- 
gent; because Boston lionises foreigners. It sets 
them up on pedestals, and wreathes their brows with 
cranberries, and concentrates upon them the whole 
intensity of a provincial admiration. Naturally for- 
eigners enjoy this, and they go away and say nice 
things of Boston in return. Yet what they say is 
not to be read or pondered save with an amusement 
that is best when it is esoteric. 

A pure product of New York City cannot write 
of Boston with detachment, for the place gets fright- 
fully upon his nerves, simply for the reason that he 
is a New Yorker and therefore temperamentally anti- 
Bostonian. And the same may be said of a chron- 



208 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

icier from Chicago. People from Philadelphia or 
San Franeisco or New Orleans would not write of 
it at all — each, however, for a different reason 
which it would be tedious to explain at length and 
which cannot be explained with brevity. It is one 
of my vanities to think that I am peculiarly fitted 
to see Boston as it really is. This is not merely boast- 
ful self-assertion, but is based upon the fact that, 
having in my early years drunk in the atmosphere 
of Boston and its tributary province, I have subse- 
quently, like Odysseus, beheld many other cities and 
many other kinds of men and have, therefore, at once 
a certain underlying sympathy with Boston and also 
a true standard of comparison by which to judge it. 
Of course, a native of that city possesses only a 
Bostonian standard, of which, if he lives there very 
long, he will be quite unable to divest himself. ■ Take, 
for example. Professor Barrett Wendell — a con- 
spicuous and melancholy instance. Mr. Wendell, as 
his name implies, is by birth and training thoroughly 
Bostonian. Nevertheless, he does not wish to be 
considered so, but would rather be taken for a cos- 
mopolite, and a somewhat ruse citizen of the world. 
When he wrote his Literary History of America, he 



BOSTON 209 

tried with great care to view the New England 
writers as he would view the French writers of 
the eighteenth century, or the British writers of the 
early nineteenth. He even patronised them now and 
then and indulged in little pleasantries at their 
expense. But the spirit of Boston breathed through 
his words in his own despite, and led to the follow- 
ing delicious little sentence a propos of a stanza by 
Lowell : 

You feel a note to which Boston hearts will vibrate so long as 
Boston hearts are beating. 

Nempe hoc assidue! There you have it cropping 
up. Boston hearts ! Think of that. They will 
beat and they will vibrate, and this matters much to 
the world beyond. The incident is the more memor- 
able because Lowell's lines do not refer to Boston 
at all, but to Massachusetts. It is a peculiar sign 
of the true Bostonian that he regards all Massachu- 
setts as merely a suburb of the City of the Three 
Hills. 

Professor Wendell reminds me of that blase 
Muhammadan gentleman, Wali Dad, of whom Kip- 
ling has much to say in his story On the City Wall, 

Wali Dad had become thoroughly Anglicised. He 

14 



210 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

had given up his religion and his racial customs. 

He lolled in the boudoir of Lalun, and criticised alike 

the British government and his own people. When 

the feast of Mohurrum came on and there was 

trouble with the Hindus, Wali Dad looked out upon 

the turmoil and emitted a few epigrams. The fight 

grew somewhat serious. Then, says Kipling of 

WaK Dad: 

His nostrils were distended, liis eyes were fixed, and he was smit- 
ing himself softly on the breast. The crowd pom*ed by with renewed 
riot — a gang of Musahnans hard-pressed by some himdred Hindu 
fanatics. WaH Dad left my side with an oath, and, shouting: "Ya 
Hasan! Ya Hussain! " plunged into the thick of the fight, where I 
lost sight of him. 

Professor Wendell is the Wali Dad of Boston. 
He can discourse in an unemotional yet piquant way 
of English literature and other literatures ; but when 
something really stirs him and he wishes to give it 
the highest praise that he can think of, he tells us 
that here is a note to which Boston hearts will vi- 
brate so long as Boston hearts are beating! 

There are many other Wali Dads in Boston, not 
all of them of such high degree ; yet they are quite 
as faithful to the Boston standard of comparison. 
Some years ago, when Prince Henry of Prussia was 



BOSTON 211 

in the United States, he went out to Cambridge and 
visited the university. A Boston newspaper fell to 
musing on this incident. It wondered just what 
sort of an impression individual Bostonians had 
made upon the Prince. It closed with the following 
delightful passage of rumination: 

We should not be so much interested to leam what Prince Henry 
thought of very distinguished men hke President Eliot, but it would 
be instructive were the Prince to set down all his reflections upon 
some of our typical Boston citizens, as, for instance, what impression 
he carried away of Henry L. Higginson. 

It never for a moment occurred to this worthy 
scribe that a royal prince who had met the greatest 
men in Europe — statesmen, soldiers, philosophers, 
scholars, financiers and others — and who was per- 
petually attending magnificent functions, might 
possibly have failed to let his mind dwell with in- 
tense earnestness upon any of the " typical Boston 
citizens " — even upon Mr. Henry L. Higginson — 
and that he would probably not have sat up nights 
trying to formulate an opinion even of a Perkins. 

But this was extremely characteristic of the Bos- 
ton mind and the Boston point of view. It is local 
— tremendously so ; and it tends to specify and be 



212 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

exceedingly concrete with regard to whatever hap- 
pens in Boston or its vicinity. Dropping to a lower 
level, just scan the headlines in the Boston news- 
papers. You will find such things as this: 

NATICK MAN FALLS FORTY FEET! 

Or this : 

SOUTH FRAMINGHAM BUTCHER TRIES A 
NEW EXPERIMENT! 

Here you have it in a nutshell. It is not so im- 
portant that some one fell forty feet, but that this 
catastrophe happened in the city of Natick. Like- 
wise, the " new experiment " may, perhaps, in itself 
be interesting, but this interest is largely height- 
ened by the circumstance that the empirical butcher 
who tried it was a resident of South Framingham. 

All this may seem to be a long and otiose digres- 
sion in a paper which undertakes to tell something 
about Boston. But if you will think of it for a mo- 
ment, you will see that it is no digression, but goes 
straight to the heart of the whole matter. In the 
preceding paragraphs, I have really been telling you 
about Boston all the time. I have been indicating and 
illustrating its concentrated individualism, which has 



BOSTON 213 

set its stamp so strongly upon this interesting city 
as to make it more truly individual than any other 
city in the United States. Bostonians will tell you 
with a sort of moan that the old landmarks are being 
swept away and that the influx of an alien popula- 
tion has sadly changed the good old town. It is 
true that Boston has had Irish mayors ; and that 
not long ago it was proposed to change the beauti- 
ful name of an historic portion of the city in honour 
of a local Italian politician. Nevertheless, the grim 
tenacity with which Boston holds to its New England 
past is so much in evidence as to make small things 
like this of no importance. The spirit of Cotton 
Mather and Hancock, the Adamses, the Quincys, the 
Lawrences and the Abbotts, wrought so mightily in 
Boston for two centuries or more as to stamp the 
place with certain traits which can perhaps never 
be eliminated. A resident of the Back Bay district, 
or one who lives in those quaint and charming little 
streets just off Beacon Hill, may note some varia- 
tions that are infinitesimally small; yet the visitor 
does not recognise them. To him, Boston is the 
same, yesterday, to-day and forever. 

I have said it many times before, and so have 



214 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

others, but I must say it once again : the thing that 
makes Boston so unlike any other city of America 
is its kinship to the smaller cities of Old England. 
You find yourself starting with a gasp of astonish- 
ment and delight on turning some comer, at being 
reminded of Leeds, or Leicester, or Canterbury, or 
Coventry, or Chester, as the case may be. Often it 
is difficult to define wherein consists this likeness, but 
it is always there. It is there just as truly on State 
Street, with its noise and bustle, as it is in Copley 
Square or along the Public Garden, or when you 
stand beside the State House and see vistas on every 
side that are not American at all, but English. It 
has been remarked of Englishmen that they are op- 
pressively self-centred, that they seem repellent to 
a stranger, but that, after all, they have made Eng- 
land a country which contains the most beautiful 
homes in the whole world. Let me say that in this 
respect Bostonians are like Englishmen, and that 
Boston is like England. One need not be here more 
than half an hour before he gets the English flavour. 
The very names upon the shop-signs are good old 
Saxon names. When you find such names upon 
Broadway in vast New York, you stop and feel like 




"The Quaint and Charming Streets off Beacon Hill" 



BOSTON 215 

taking oif your hat, they are so rare, and so incon- 
gruously placed beside the names of Germans, Irish, 
Poles, Italians and even Greeks and smooth Armeni- 
ans ; but in Boston it is quite the other way. A for- 
eign name is here a curiosity. It is delightful even to 
know that the street up which you stroll is Marl- 
borough Street or Devonshire Street, or Somerset 
Street, or Commonwealth Avenue, or Beacon Street, 
and that the cars which pass you bear such legends as 
" Middlesex Fells." What a pleasure to know that 
there are fells near Boston! How fine the good old 
county names of Middlesex and Suif oik ! How pleas- 
ing that the statues which adorn the town are not 
the statues of Garibaldi, or Verazzano, or even of 
Columbus, who was, after all, a dago, but of Ameri- 
cans such as Washington and Webster and Everett 
and Sumner and Hooker. How it thrills one to find 
that its park is not called a park, but has the good 
old name of Common, and that the beautifully shaded 
turf below it is a Public Garden! Even though the 
Shaw monument is disfigured by an inscription in 
atrocious Latin, it was erected in honour of a gen- 
uine American. 

But, after all, it Is the homes of Boston that 



216 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

make the greater part of it so beautiful. Gently 
swelling fronts, clustered thick with ivy, fine old 
balconies touched always with a suggestion of green- 
ery and with awnings that cast a pleasant shade 
below — these are what most appeal to the wan- 
derer from other and cruder American cities. I 
don't know precisely the place which Mr. Howells 
had in mind when he described the little house in 
Clover Street where Bartley Hubbard and Marcia 
set up their household gods ; but I have seen a 
dozen pleasant thoroughfares which might have 
served him as a model. One would rather live in 
Clover Street, however humble it may be, than in 
any of those brownstone structures decorated with 
griffins and impossible gods along the pretentious 
West End Avenue in New York. And if you come 
to squares and public buildings, there is nothing in 
New York to equal the shaded approach to the State 
House, whose gilded dome looks benignantly down 
upon all of Boston. Nor can New York equal Cop- 
ley Square, which, indeed, would be conspicuous for 
its chaste magnificence in any European capital. 
Richardson's great architectural creation. Trinity 
Church, conceived in a spirit that is Romanesque, 



BOSTON • 217 

surpasses Old Trinity in New York, and makes St. 
Patrick's Cathedral, with its two perky little spires, 
seem fantastic. What the still unfinished Cathedral 
of St. John the Divine will actually be after the 
architects have made the fiftieth change in their in- 
harmonious plans, no one can say. At present it is 
squat and huge, a j umble of Classical and Gothic. It 
can never hope to have the unity and harmony of 
the noblest church in Boston. Copley Square, in 
fact, next to Beacon Hill, is Boston's chief glory, 
with its three churches, the Public Library, and the 
Museum of Fine Arts. I have enough of the New 
Yorker in me to make me envious of these splendid 
structures, and enough of the Bostonian to regret 
that a few trumpery shops have been allowed to 
creep in and mar the symmetry of the whole. 

Reverting to the English aspects of the city 
(which includes the State as well), one likes to know 
that the Governor of Massachusetts and the Lieu- 
tenant-Governor are the only public officers in the 
United States who are legally the possessors of titles. 
The Governor is by law " His Excellency," and the 
Lieutenant-Governor is by law " His Honour." So, 
too, the sheriff of the county is something like an 



218 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

English sheriff — a person of much dignity, and 
not a lounging poHtician, nor a glorified constable, 
as is the case elsewhere. He is entitled to wear a 
uniform and also to carry a sword beside him, pre- 
cisely as the sheriffs did nearly three centuries ago. 
Furthermore, every proclamation of His Excellency 
and every official order of the " General Court " 
winds up with the stately words : " God Save the 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts!" just as in 
modern Rome the city ordinances still bear the an- 
cient and hallowed abbreviation " S. P. Q. R." 

These things are not trifles. They are indicative 
of the spirit which, as I have said, survives all modem 
changes. They are rooted in the past. They are 
redolent of a fine tradition. 

On the other hand, while this is English and 
Saxon, it is none the less the Saxon-English of a 
provincial town. The Boston of the past was aris- 
tocratic in a sense — aristocratic as Venice was, but 
without the finer touches which would have come had 
the community been Royalist and Cavalier instead 
of Puritan. It was an aristocracy of those who be- 
lieved that " the India trade " had the odour of 
sanctity, and that the rich merchant who owned 



BOSTON 219 

slave ships and imported blacks for the Southern 
plantations was something of a nobleman. A noble- 
man he was, but without the esoteric graces of a 
nobleman. He was strong, but hard. He served 
the Lord on Sundays; but through the week-days 
he was busy on the wharves, reckoning up his profits 
from those ships, underneath whose battened hatches 
there screamed and yelled a herd of wretched negroes, 
rolling their yellow eyeballs and gasping for air and 
water while the vessel swayed in the sultry calms of 
the southern seas. He had no sense of humour, just 
as to-day he has very little; since from the roof of 
a fine chamber in the State House there still hangs 
a codfish as a symbol of his seafaring. The Gov- 
ernor may be styled " His Excellency," but he is 
very likely in private life a manufacturer of shoes. 
The sheriff of Middlesex may appear with sword and 
uniform and with huge gilt epaulets upon his shoul- 
ders ; but he also wears what he would call " a silk 
hat," so that he was not long ago described as " re- 
sembling some distinguished diplomat from Haiti." 
The Boston Lancers go cantering over the long 
bridge to Harvard, or up and down the streets of 
Boston, and they make a rather fine display; yet 



220 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

no one ever heard of these civic warriors engaging 
on the stricken field. They are really the trainband 
of Boston; and while in this they recall a British 
origin, they recall no less the lower levels to which 
trainbands belong. Boston, in fact, is not at its best 
when it goes beyond a Puritan notion of elegance 
and comfort. A banquet there will show extraordi- 
nary solecisms in the order of the wines; and we 
have the high authority of Mr. Howells for the fact 
that Dan Mavering and his father — both of them 
Harvard men — when lunching at the Parker House, 
ordered raw oysters in midsummer. What is re- 
garded as the finest of Boston's hotels is really rather 
stodgy, even though no expense has been spared in 
its decoration and cuisine. The so-called Brahmin 
caste is called so only by its members, or at the most 
it is to be reckoned as the Sudra. 

It is because Bostonians are not aware of this, 
and will never be aware of it, that their attitude is so 
different from the attitude of those who inhabit other 
American cities. Thus, if you tell a Chicago gentle- 
man that you think his town extremely sooty, and if 
you quote to him a little of what Kipling said about 
it — as to " its maze of wire-ropes overhead and 




o 
pq 



> 



BOSTON 221 

dirty stone-flagging underfoot " — " its turmoil and 
squash " — he will turn on you with indignation and 
recite to you statistics of its rapid growth, the num- 
ber of pigs that are slaughtered there each day, and 
will tell you how every one is hustling for money, 
except those who are also hustling for culture. If 
you remark to a Philadelphian that his city is the 
most corruptly governed of any city in the world, 
he will look abashed and rabbit-faced, because he 
cannot deny it. If you tell a New Yorker that his 
metropolis has filthy streets which are continually 
torn up, that it swarms with aliens, that it is heter- 
ogeneous and has no civic solidarity, he will frankly 
admit all this without resentment, adding only: 
" Well, after all, the place suits me" But when you 
criticise Boston to a Bostonian, your words glide 
from him like water from a duck. Who are you that 
you should speak of Boston? Boston is Boston, and 
nothing else can possibly be said of it. The Boston 
man may look at you with pity, or he may look at 
you with tolerant contempt, or he will politely 
change the subject for the reason that, no matter 
what you say, it cannot possibly have any interest 
for him. This trait is profoundly British — pro- 



222 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

vincial British — and it is of the essence of Pliilis- 
tinism; for the true Philistine thinks that he is bet- 
ter than any other person, and that what he has is 
the norm by which all things are to be measured. 
Who can criticise a norm? It is far above all criti- 
cism and even above all comment, because of its 
normality. 

There is only one thing as to which Bostonians are 
not absolutely certain, and that is the perfection of 
the language which they use. Of course, they believe 
that their English is exactly what it ought to be, but 
they do not believe this with the absolute conviction 
in which their other faiths are so firmly embedded. 
Even Oliver Wendell Holmes observed some peculiari- 
ties of speech among the country folk in the vicinity 
of Boston ; . so that he wrote the line — 

" No well-bred rustic can enunciate ' view.' " 

The stranger within the gates of Boston will be 
struck with the peculiar fashion of pronouncing such 
words as " hard," " yard," " dark," and so on. It 
is impossible to represent it even by the use of pho- 
netic symbols ; but when a Boston man says " hard," 
he eliminates the liquid altogether and pronounces 



BOSTON 223 

the word like " had," prolonging, however, the " a " 
while keeping it still short and " close." As you 
ascend the social scale this peculiarity is not so 
marked, yet traces of it linger ; so that about half of 
the graduates of Harvard utter the name of their 
Alma Mater with this extraordinary rendering of the 
first syllable. So, as I said, Boston people have 
dreadful though unuttered doubts about the quahty 
of their spoken English. They do so want it to be 
exactly right. Here I may tell a story which is not 
new to other Americans, but which perhaps no one 
has ever ventured to tell to a Bostonian. It appears 
that a visitor of distinction was received in Boston 
with great empressement. During his visit a Boston 
lady asked him with some trepidation: 

" Do you find that there is any difference between 
the English spoken by cultivated Americans else- 
where, and the English which you have heard from 
us here in Boston ? " 

" No ; " he replied, meditatively — " at least, there 
is no particular difference except this: cultivated 
Americans elsewhere speak easy EngKsh, while the 
same class of Americans in Boston speak anxious 
EngHsh." 



224 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

The intensely local Boston spirit has left some 
unpleasant marks upon the history of Massachu- 
setts. Thus, when George Washington, in 1789, 
made his -first visit to New England as President of 
the United States, he was received with great en- 
thusiasm in Connecticut and New Hampshire, even 
though these States were not wholly favourable to 
the new Republic. But it was only in Boston that 
he was met with something which bordered upon in- 
sult. Old John Hancock was Governor of the State, 
and he refused either to meet the President at the 
border, or even to call upon him after Washington 
had entered Boston. This was immensely character- 
istic, and Hancock showed himself thereby to be a 
true Bostonian — not because he was pompous and 
pedantic and disregarded the amenities of life, but 
because he honestly believed that the Governor of 
Massachusetts was a greater man in every way than 
the President of the nation of which Massachusetts 
formed a part. That is very much the fashion in 
which a Bostonian pur sang would act to-day under 
the compulsion of unprecedented events. So, again, 
during the War of 1812, another Governor of Massa- 
chusetts hampered the nation in its struggle with 



BOSTON 225 

Great Britain. Aid and comfort were given to the 
enemy, and twelve Massachusetts delegates attended 
the treasonable Hartford Convention. The war had 
injured the " business " of the Boston merchants, and 
that was enough for them. That Boston should suf- 
fer for the benefit of the whole Republic was unthink- 
able. Why? Simply because it was Boston. An- 
other Boston man, the fanatical Wendell Phillips, 
later described the Constitution of the United States 
as " a covenant with hell." Why ? Simply because 
he, a Bostonian, did not approve of it. 

So far as Boston, at various times, aided England 
against Americans, this was not (as one might 
think) because Boston is itself so English. No- 
where, in fact, is there so little Anglomania. The 
people from the earliest times have been of English 
stock, but they have shown this most strikingly in 
their general willingness to oppose, confront and 
badger England. They have the Englishman's un- 
reason, stubbornness, and pride. If you doubt it, 
take a carriage and drive out to Charlestown, bid- 
ding the man to stop at Bunker Hill. Even the Bos- 
tonians are a little ashamed, in these days, of going 

there. They leave this to strangers and newly mar- 

15 



226 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

ried couples. When you ask the hall-porter at the 
Somerset to call a carriage, and tell him that you 
are going out to Bunker Hill, he will smile a dep- 
recatory smile and will deferentially suggest that 
there are better drives in other directions. It may 
be so, but there is something about that rough-hewn 
obelisk that appeals to me and stirs my blood. 

The rugged blocks of stone appear to symbolise 
the rugged, untrained men who, on the seventeenth 
of June, in 1775, faced the choicest soldiers of the 
British army and hurled them back again and 
again, until every bullet had been shot away, and 
every powder-horn had been emptied. On Bunker 
Hill, one recalls the familiar anecdote of the Ameri- 
can who, in later years, visited the citadel at Que- 
bec. On this visit he was guided by a friend, an 
English gentleman, who had just a little of the 
tactlessness that marks his people. The pair, in 
roving about, came upon a small old-fashioned can- 
non which bore a label showing that it was captured 
from the Americans at the battle of Bunker Hill. 
The Englishman called attention to the label. 

" You see," he said, " tliis cannon. We took it 
from you at Bunker Hill." 



BOSTON 227 

The American looked with a curious interest at 
the ancient field-piece. Then he remarked thought- 
fully: 

" Yes, there is no doubt that you have got the 
cannon. But," he added, somewhat more slowly 
and distinctly, " it happens that we have got the 
HiU." 

Whenever I visit Bunker Hill, I always go into 
the little museum at the base of the monument, — 
not, as one might suppose, to buy souvenirs or to 
look at patriotic relics ; but especially to see an old 
coloured print which hangs upon the wall, and 
which, so the legend underneath it says, represents 
" The Honble Israel Putnam, Esqre." I don't believe 
that Putnam could possibly have resembled the like- 
ness given in this print, which I regard as the most 
remarkable print that I have ever seen. No human 
being and no being who was even partly human 
could look like such a pig-faced, bloated and pre- 
posterous old codger. That is what makes the 
print so well worth seeing. I have spent hours in 
the print-shops of Boston, trying to find a dupli- 
cate of it, but have never been successful. 

From an artistic point of view, the marble statue 



228 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

of Joseph Warren which stands in this museum is 
hardly better in its way. It is from the hand of 
Henry Dexter, and represents Warren, not as a 
soldier and a man of action, but as a supercilious- 
looking lady's doctor. If he really was like that, 
I cannot feel any deep regret that a British grena- 
dier poked him in the ribs with a bayonet, as rep- 
resented in Trumbull's painting. 

But on the very summit of the hill, at the very 
spot where he is reputed to have stood throughout 
the battle, stands a bronze figure of Colonel Wil- 
liam Prescott wrought by Story. That statue is 
one which gives, in every line, a strong impression 
of all that is and was the very best in New Eng- 
land and in Boston. It is the incarnation of the 
spirit of New England standing there alert, keen- 
eyed and watchful, grasping a drawn sword and 
gazing toward the scarlet ranks that are sweeping 
slowly up the hill to their own destruction. The face 
is not a sympathetic face, but it is clean and strong. 
It tells of a clear brain, of an unflinching purpose, 
and of dauntless courage. Prescott was the last 
to leave the field, and it is fitting that he should be 
the first to receive the admiration of every one who 



BOSTON 229 

now approaches it. Somehow, Prescott is like Bos- 
ton when we have purged away the minor blemishes 
at which we jest so lightly. Though we come to 
scoif, we must, if we are thoughtful and sincere, re- 
main to pray — to pray that the truth and strength 
and power which seem to live in this heroic figure 
may persist and remain as an ideal for all Americans. 



Ill 

LAKE PLEASANT, MASSACHUSETTS 

My revered master and admired model, Herr 
Baedeker of Leipzig, makes a point of keeping his 
guide-books continually revised. He has an army 
of intelligent young men who fly over the face of 
the earth, eating, drinking and sleeping at every 
possible hotel and restaurant, bestowing asterisks 
or removing them, out of the fulness of their knowl- 
edge, studying time-tables and jotting down new 
objects of interest everywhere. The result is that 
the guide-books of Herr Baedeker give you prac- 
tically the very latest information about every place 
on the habitable globe. Being an irresponsible per- 
son, I cannot myself pretend to be quite so contem- 
poraneous, nor have I at my disposal an army of 
intelligent young men. I do my own travelling and 
:aiy own observing; and I have to do it as occasion 
serves. Consequently, in the present paper my ac- 
count may not be wholly accurate as to superficial 
things, such as buildings, temples, and eating-houses ; 



LAKE PLEASANT, MASSACHUSETTS 231 

but I am pretty sure that the essence of Lake Pleas- 
ant, Massachusetts, is just the same to-day as it 
was several years ago, when I hastened thither at 
the urgent promptings of an acquaintance. 

This person was a strong believer in Spiritualism. 
He had talked to me about the subject for months. 
I knew the theory quite well; but, unfortunately, 
I had never seen any spirits. I reproached him 
gently for not having introduced me to those inner 
circles of Spiritualism where ghosts are as com- 
mon as newsboys, and where you can both talk with 
them and actually see them. On one occasion I 
pressed him so strongly that he became a little 
nettled and remarked: 

" Well, you need n't be so sceptical. When you 
are convinced I want you to be absolutely convinced ; 
and that is why I have n't taken you to visit any 
ordinary mediums. It happens that no really great 
mediums have been here for some time. But if you 
really want to investigate this subject in a serious 
mood, go up and spend a week or so at Lake Pleas- 
ant during the annual gathering of Spiritualists 
from all over the United States. There you will 
find mediums who will show you things remarkable 



232 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

enough to convince you, just as Mr. Slade con- 
vinced Professor Crookes." 

(I observe that no Spiritualist ever speaks of 
Spiritualism without mentioning Mr. Henry Slade 
and Professor Crookes. This particular conversion 
is, so to speak, the long suit of the Occultists.) 

Well, at that particular time I was not yet ready 
to say with Plocamus, Quadrigce mece decucurrerunt, 
so I pricked up my ears and asked: 

" Where on earth is Lake Pleasant .^^ '' 

" Oh," he answered, " don't you know? It is a 
most beautiful place up in Franklin County, Mas- 
sachusetts. In the summer, as many as twenty 
thousand Spiritualists gather there and you will 
find the most marvellous evidences to prove the ex- 
istence of the human spirit after death." 

"Good!" said I. "I'll go." 

So that is why, on one balmy summer noon, I 
found myself alighting at a little station in a half- 
cleared forest in Franklin County, Massachusetts. 
As I looked about me I seemed to be in a sort of 
frontier settlement. All sorts of shacks and huts and 
two-story cottages, made of unstained pine boards, 
peered through the trees with a rawness that was 



LAKE PLEASANT, MASSACHUSETTS 233 

odd enough in the heart of the Old Bay State. 
There were also tents, and curiously constructed lit- 
tle cabins. Closer examination showed that a sort 
of design was apparent in the disarrangement of 
the whole; and that one might trace paths which 
were in the future to develop into actual streets. 
Some of the cottages had hammocks swung on their 
little verandas. The tents usually displayed big 
scrawling home-made signs with charcoal letters on 
brown paper. Now, it is my first principle on reach- 
ing a strange place — and this place seemed very 
strange indeed — to make at once for some coign 
of vantage where I can secure shelter, a room, and 
an assurance of some kind of food. So, without 
paying much attention to what was going on around 
me, I inquired my way to the hotel. The hotel was 
of unpainted pine and seemed to have been erected 
the day before yesterday. The uncompromising 
nails stood out against the pale yellow planking. 
The windows were in the experimental stage. A 
smell of fried things greeted me as I approached the 
front door of the hostelry. Presently, I had pos- 
session of a bedroom, the walls of which were also 
of thin pine planks, while the floor was divested of 



234 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

any covering. The only furniture was a cot-bed, a 
cheap washstand, and a small uncertain chair upon 
which I preferred not to sit. 

Nevertheless, here was a place that was for the 
time my own. I hastily removed the marks of travel 
from my person, and, being summoned by the sound 
of a huge cow-bell, I locked the door from the out- 
side and went down to the dining-room for dinner, 
which in spiritualistic circles is served precisely at 
the hour of noon. Sitting at a rough plank table, 
I could observe the types that were represented 
around me. Afterward I discovered that they were 
of a class very much superior to the ordinary run of 
people who frequent Lake Pleasant. This is because 
the " hotel " was supposed to be very luxurious and 
even aristocratic; and its denizens were surpassed 
in this respect only by such Spiritualists as dwelt 
in cottages. After all, mutatis mutandis, there is 
no great difference between Lake Pleasant and New- 
port. It is the cottage colony that makes up the 
patriciate. The upper middle classes belong to the 
hotels, while the bourgeoisie inhabit boarding-houses 
or ordinary lodgings. 

The dinner consisted of fried ham and fried pota- 



LAKE PLEASANT, MASSACHUSETTS 235 

toes and fried onions, with some coffee which might 
have been brewed in the Black Hole of Calcutta. 
The bread likewise was of a weight entirely dispro- 
portionate to the surface of each slice. I had a dark 
suspicion that if I ate the meal which was slammed 
before me by a blowsy girl, I should certainly see 
spirits before midnight whether they were there or 
not. Consequently, dinner was not prolonged, and 
I wandered out into the sunshine to inspect more 
closely this curious, half-frontier, half-gypsy camp. 
My attention was immediately attracted by a pro- 
longed and monotonous bellowing. It proceeded 
from a grey-bearded man who was perched upon a 
huge pine platform whence he expounded his doc- 
trines to about fifty men and women who gathered 
around him without, I must add, taking very serious 
notice of what he said. 

"Yes, yes," he ejaculated, waving his skinny 
arms in air, " the soul goes right on developing. It 
has been developing for a million years and it will 
keep on developing right straight along and don't 
you forget it! I can prove it to you. Take the 
tadpole. The tadpole is first of all a little ordinary 
thing and then it gets to be a big tadpole with a 



236 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

tail. Then its tail is taken from it and it becomes 
a little frawg! After that, the little frawg gets to 
be a great big frawg. Now, doesn't that prove that 
the human soul was once a little ordinary thing? 
It grows until it is just like us. We are all of us 
in the tadpole stage. Our body is like the tadpole's 
tail. But pretty soon we shall shed it and then our 
spirits will be Hke the little frawg. At that time 
we can speak with those we leave behind; but after 
we get to be like the big frawg, we will go too far 
away from them. We will be more and more spirit- 
ual and they can't get hold of us. It 's the same 
way with the man and the monkey. First, the man 
was a monkey. Then he got to be a man, — at first, 
just a little baby, and then a boy, and then a real 
man. He could talk with monkeys once, but I can 
tell you that when the man gets into any scrap with 
a monkey, the man will knock the monkey every 
time ! " 

His grey beard wagged for half an hour as he 
piled up proof on proof. Some one told me that 
he was Professor Boggs from Idaho. I waited until 
his oration had ended because I wanted to ask him 
some questions. So, when his breath had given out 



LAKE PLEASANT, MASSACHUSETTS 237 

and his throat was very hoarse, I went up and compli- 
mented him on his effort and also asked him if he 
could give me the names of any particularly power- 
ful mediums who were then residing in the camp. 

" Mediums ? " he said with a touch of scorn. " I 've 
got past all mediums. Still, I guess that you 're a 
beginner ; so I '11 recommend you to Eva Dusen- 
bury. She is eng rappo with some spirits that you 
can trust. Then I guess you 'd better go to a 
se-ants of the Butts Brothers to-night at eight 
o'clock. They are materialising-mediums. I guess 
they 're about the best around the camp." 

Thanking the Professor, I noted down the names 
and then went for a peaceful stroll, enjoying the 
bizarre conglomeration of huts and tents with their 
signs and hammocks. I passed the " temple," 
which was also made of pine, and I gazed into the 
lake, which at any rate looked clean. 

There were some stalls at which small objects 
were for sale. One of them was a book-stall, and I 
lingered before it quite a while, looking over the 
literature which it displayed. Of course, it all bore 
directly upon Spiritualism; but evidently it lacked 
a certain theological unity. Some of the pamphlets 



238 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

seemed to hold that Spiritualism verifies the tenets 
of orthodox Christianity. Others seemed to have 
cut loose entirely from any known religion. For 
instance, there was a huge volume of some eight 
hundred pages which the bookseller said was a new 
Bible written by an inspired dentist. I asked how 
he had come to write it. 

" Well," said the bookseller, who was an extremely 
shrewd-looking person, " that 's just where the mer- 
ricle comes in. The author was setting at his type- 
writer one day, when all of a sudden his fingers began 
to jump around the keys ; and when he took the first 
page out he found that it was the begininng of a 
special revelation. So he went on for about six 
months and finally he finished the book just as you 
see here." 

I turned over some of the pages of the volume 
and tried to understand what they contained. But 
beyond the fact that they had to do with the life 
and observations of some people with very queer 
names, I could not grasp the thought. No sentence 
seemed to have any connection with any other sen- 
tence, and after studying for a little while, my mind 
began to reel as though I had been thinking back- 



LAKE PLEASANT, MASSACHUSETTS 239 

wards. I said this to the bookseller and he gave 
me the usual answer. 

" Of course you can't understand it because its 
thought is Infinite. If you buy a copy and take it 
home and study it for several years, you can kind 
of work into it. Then you will understand the 
revelation. You can have the book for six dollars." 

Somehow the prospect of several years' study in 
the future and the loss of six dollars in the immedi- 
ate present, failed to attract me, so I looked over 
the other wares and found a work in paper covers 
with the title Christianity a Fraud! Now this in 
itself was not exciting. People have been hammer- 
ing at Christianity for nearly two thousand years 
and Christianity does not seem to be any the worse 
for it. But I gathered from other sentences upon 
the cover that the book contained some special com- 
munications from Roman authors, collected and 
written down by a very celebrated medium. This 
promised well. Perhaps I should find some of the 
lost books of Livy, or the missing chapters of 
Petronius or possibly some parts of Sallust that 
scholars have regarded as destroyed. So I pur- 
chased the volume for fifty cents. Having done so, 



240 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

the bookseller rather wamied to me and began to 
talk the gossip of the camp. I ventured to ask him 
whether the celebrated Eva Dusenbury was the best 
of all the mediums. He winked one eye and said: 

" Oh, yes, she 's a first-class medium all right ; 
but I guess there 's some things about her she 
would n't Hke to have me tell you." 

He declined, however, to go any further into this 
mysterious matter, so I asked him about the Butts 
Brothers. Again he winked his eye and said that 
while the Butts Brothers were all right as mediums, 
he would n't trust them with a nickel even if it were 
nailed down to the floor. 

I stopped at sundry other booths and stalls and 
got into conversation with their proprietors. It 
occurred to me as a neat thing to ask them what 
they thought of the bookseller. Every one of them 
informed me that he was a mighty smart man, but 
that he had served two terms in jail. In fact, in 
the course of the afternoon, pretty nearly every 
conspicuous person in the camp had let me know in 
confidence that every other conspicuous person was 
no better than he or she ought to be; and, indeed, 
I have no doubt that all of them were telling me the 



LAKE PLEASANT, MASSACHUSETTS 241 

truth. It appeared that there was a sort of queen 
of the whole community. I forget her name, but I 
know that she excited a perfectly frantic envy in 
all the clairvoyants, mediums and soothsayers who 
belonged to her own sex. I could not understand 
the reason for this feeling except that she was 
" awfully stuck-up," that she had too many 
clothes, and that the male mediums all regarded 
her as good looking. Strolling around to where 
her cottage was situated, I had the good fortune to 
behold the lady lolling in a hammock. I should 
not myself have thought her beautiful, though per- 
haps the standards of beauty at Lake Pleasant are 
diiferent from those in Paris or New York. Nor, 
for that matter, should I have imagined that her 
clothes were anything to envy, though on this point, 
of course, mascuhne judgment is very fallible. Still, 
I must set down the fact that no great skill had 
gone into the bleaching of her hair and that she 
would have appeared much more attractive had she 
supplied a couple of teeth that were very obviously 
missing. As to her clothes — well, the combination 
of a purple waist, a yellow belt and a bright green 

skirt, involved a colour-scheme which may have been 

16 



242 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

daring, but which was certainly a bit too much so 
for my taste. 

Turning away from such shining lights as she, 
I inspected very carefully the ordinary population 
of the camp — the people who were packed in tents 
or little shanties, and who seemed to be honest and 
sincere and to have come there with that sort of spir- 
itual longing which may seize upon revealed religion 
for its satisfaction, or which may possibly go wan- 
dering off after strange gods and the cheap phe- 
nomena of Occultism. There was something pathetic 
about these people. Their speech and accent told 
me that many of them had come great distances — 
from the Middle West, and even from the Pacific 
Slope. And they had come to be consoled, perhaps 
to speak with the spirits of those whom they had lost, 
to hear the familiar voices of mothers and fathers 
or of little children who had (to use their phrase) 
" passed over," but who were still hovering about 
the earth to comfort those who mourned their loss. 
These people represented the profoundest depths of 
ignorance. To look at them, you would say that 
they were capable of no emotions, that the bitterness 
and hardness of their daily lives had crushed out every 



LAKE PLEASANT, MASSACHUSETTS 243 

aspiration and every hope. The men, dressed in 
homespun, had faces that seemed sullen. The women 
in faded prints and wearing tattered shawls, sat 
silently for hours upon the stumps of trees when 
they were not preparing the rude meals which their 
men-folk ate in equal silence. 

Heaven knows what sacrifices these men and women 
had made, so that they might come a thousand miles 
in emigrant trains to be comforted by Eva Dusen- 
bury and the Butts and inferior mediums. Pennies 
had been hoarded painfully. Every form of pleasure 
had been given up. They had stinted themselves in 
food and clothing for this one great week at Lake 
Pleasant, where they could commune with beings from 
another world. It was sad, yes, infinitely sad; and 
yet perhaps to undeceive them would have been a cruel 
thing. Doubtless they went back to months and 
months of toil and destitution, strengthened and up- 
lifted by the firm behef that they had seen and spoken 
to their lost ones. Doubtless they were robbed and 
cheated and egregiously fooled; and yet would any 
one have the heart to change their infinite belief into 
a scepticism which would make their lives an utter 
blank.? Who shall say.? For my part I take refuge 



244 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

in the ancient maxim, populws vult decipi, which is 
one of the profoundest sayings that I know of in the 
philosophy of the human mind. It has been enlarged 
in the old Italian saying : " If I am deceived I pray 
that I may never know it. But if I know it, I pray 
that I may be able to view it as a joke." 



About five o'clock, having made the circuit of the 
camp, and having meditated much and acquired a 
good deal of information, I proceeded to the abode of 
Eva Dusenbury. Eva was sharing a tiny cottage 
with another priestess of the Occult. Both of them 
were sitting on the porch; and in response to my 
inquiries, Eva rose and introduced herself. She was 
a haggard little woman with a sallow skin seamed 
thick with wrinkles. Her hair was like that of the 
Witch of Endor. Her hands seemed like the claws 
of some large bird, and I should judge that she was 
not overfond of soap and water. 

" Come upstairs," said Eva. 

I went upstairs and found myself in the medium's 
sleeping apartment, which must have measured about 
six feet by eight. However, it contained, besides her 



LAKE PLEASANT, MASSACHUSETTS £45 

truckle-bed and a little dressing-table, two chairs, in 
one of which I took a seat, while Eva occupied the 
other. 

" The fee for a se-ants is fifty cents," said the 
medium, by way of opening the conversation. It 
was obvious that Eva had a practical mind. 

After she had received the coin and had deftly 
slipped it down into one of her stockings, she sur- 
prised me considerably by seizing my right hand and 
giving three convulsive shivers. Then her eyes rolled 
upward in a most disconcerting fashion and she shud- 
dered quite a little more. 

I am afraid that I did not play the game quite 
fairly with Eva Dusenbury. I was sceptical enough 
to think that she was going to lead me on into admis- 
sions which she would take advantage of. So per- 
haps I helped her just a httle. Presently, in a 
strange and hollow voice she said, speaking from her 
trance: 

" There is a spirit near you. She is one whom you 
have cared for very much." 

I gripped her hand as though in agitation. 

" Yes," she continued, " it is, as it comes to me, 
one of your relations." 



246 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

Ag-ain I gripped her hand. 

'' She is trying to speak to you through me. She 
knew that you were coming. She cannot exactly tell 
me who she is. She might just possibly have been 
your sister." 

I started violently. My emotion nearly overcame 
me. Eva felt encouraged. 

'* Yes," she continued, " it is your sister, but I 
cannot tell how old she is. She may have passed 
over a good while ago. Let me see, she might be 
eight ? " 

I remained passive. 

" No, she must be more than that, at least 
fourteen." 

I still maintained a passive attitude. 

" No, even more than that," said Eva, keeping the 
pupils of her eyes somewhere in the top of her head, 
" I think she is eighteen." 

This time I pressed Eva's hand and made the chair 
creak. 

"Yes," said Eva, " she is just eighteen. She con- 
trols me now completely. We are eng rappo. She 
wishes me to tell you that she is very happy — yes, 
very, very happy and that you are not to sorrow for 



LAKE PLEASANT, MASSACHUSETTS 247 

her. She is ahvays near you and she knows how much 
you think of her. She will stay in Spirit Land until 
you come, and there you will be reunited." 

Eva went on for some three minutes more in the 
same inspired strain. I was deeply moved — the more 
so because I had never had a sister; but, of course, 
I had n't the heart to tell Eva that. It might have 
hurt her feelings, and then again she might have 
said that, after all, it was somebody else's sister who 
was interested in me. Therefore, I let it go at that; 
and presently, after Eva had given full value for my 
fifty cents, her eyes came down to normal, she re- 
leased my hand, and intimated that the se-ants was 
over. So there was nothing else to do but to go 
away. I had learned something about Spiritualism, 
though not precisely what my acquaintance in New 
York had desired me to learn. 

Strolling down to the margin of the lake, I lit a 
cigarette and began to read the volume which was 
intended to prove that Christianity is a fraud. It was 
a great book. The author began by saying that the 
priests of ancient Rome, having gradually lost their 
influence, had invented a new religion in the shape 
of Christianity and had promptly transformed them- 



248 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

selves from pagan sacerdotes into Christian priests. 
In doing this thej had forged certain passages in the 
ancient writers in order to give an appearance of 
veracity to the new faith. Thus, said the writer, 
Christianity has been propagated for many centuries. 
It has flourished and has exercised great influence 
over the nations of the world; but now the mediums 
are getting after it. They had summoned up the 
spirits of the ancient historians and these spirits had 
exposed the frauds of the Roman priests. Then came 
a series of documents in the shape of letters communi- 
cated to the medium who wrote the book. I was 
rather interested in the epistolary style adopted by 
these noble Romans. In their own time they would 
have put their names at the beginning of the letters 
together with the name of him to whom the letter was 
addressed. But apparently they had made conces- 
sions to modem usage. Not only in this matter, but 
in the forms of their own names. Thus Gains Plinius 
Caecilius Secundus — a gentleman who prided himself 
upon good form — had signed his letter simply 
" Pliny." Doubtless he adapted his name to the 
English system, but it rather surprised me that he 
was so abrupt. A person of his urbanity should at 



LAKE PLEASANT, MASSACHUSETTS M9 

least have said " Yours faithfully, Pliny," while Pon- 
tius Pilate, who also wrote a letter, ought to have 
used some ofEcial style, as, for instance, " I beg to 
remain. Sir, your obedient servant, Pontius Pilate." 
But these, after all, were minor matters, and I read 
the volume for an hour with unfeigned interest and 
edification, especially the foot-notes, which contained 
archaeological lore of a nature which no savant of 
modern times has ever even suspected and which would 
tend to overthrow all the notions that we have of 
ancient life. It also completely contradicted what 
the Romans themselves have left to us engraved on 
stone and bronze. But that, also of course, is a small 
matter to a medium. 

• • • , • • • • 

At six o'clock the cow-bell rang tumultuously for 
supper. A fine meal was spread before us — pork- 
chops, pork and beans, doughnuts, and a kind of tea 
which I should be afraid to put my finger in lest it 
should shrivel up. I was pretty hungry by this time, 
yet not hungry enough to consume pork-chops and 
doughnuts. So I trifled with the beans ; and, finding 
my right-hand neighbour a fairly intelligent and 
well-informed person, I told him about what had be- 



250 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

fallen me in the adytum of Eva Dusenbury and asked 
him whether this did not discredit her value as a 
medium. 

" Not at all," said he ; " she was controlled by a 
spirit ; only, of course, it was not a reliable spirit. 
It was merely fooling you, just as it was fooling her. 
Undoubtedly it was a diakka." 

"A what?" said I. 

" A diakka," said he. " Don't you know that the 
spirit of James Victor Wilson once gave an explana- 
tion of the diakkas which clears away the charge 
of fraud when made against mediums like Eva 
Dusenbury ? " 

" No," said I, " and I never heard of James Victor 
Wilson, either." 

" Well," returned my friend, " Wilson was a good 
man when he was alive, and his spirit gives you 
straight talk. He was the control of Andrew Jack- 
son Davis, and through him he explained all about 
the diakka. The whole thing stands to reason. You 
see, when very good and upright people die, their 
spirits go at once, as a rule, to a place so far away 
from earth that most mediums can't get into contact 
with them ; but when a mean, ordinary citizen passes 



LAKE PLEASANT, MASSACHUSETTS 251 

over — what does his spirit do ? It is n't fit for the 
great Draco Maj or Belt. It is still keen about things 
here in the world. So it just hangs around and gets 
mediums into trouble. That 's what a diakka is — 
just a low-down ordinary spirit. No, sir! I would n't 
believe a diakka under any circumstances, and you 
must have struck one this afternoon. But Eva Dusen- 
bury is all right. She 's a friend of mine." 

I asked him about the Butts Brothers, and he said 
that they were very fine. They could tell a diakka 
as far as they could feel him, and if I went to their 
seance I would be convinced and not be fooled by con- 
temptible, lying spirits. No, sir! 

Supplied with these bits of information, I went out 
into the woods at half past seven. They presented 
a weird sight. Innumerable lights twinkled among 
the trees and underbrush, for every tent had at least 
one candle, while here and there a great flare of flame 
streamed out from a naphtha torch and cast a lurid 
and unearthly glow down the dim forest paths. The 
Butts Brothers had a large tent, into which a number 
of persons were already filing. One of the brothers, 
in a grey flannel shirt, was collecting twenty-five 
cents from each visitor who entered. Within, there 



252 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

was scarcely any light at all save that which was 
afforded by two kerosene lamps. At the inner ex- 
tremity of the tent was a sort of cabinet about three 
feet high. Heaped around its base were garments 
that had apparently been thrown there loosely. 

Facing the cabinet was a semicircle of seats which 
were gradually filled. The dim light, the awe of all 
those present, and the strangeness of the place itself, 
created an effect at which one may very readily laugh, 
but which was none the less quite real. It was an 
effect of oppression and of anticipation. Something 
was going to happen in the gloom. What would it 
be.? 

At eight o'clock the flap of the tent was closed. 
I whispered to my neighbour on the left: 

'' What is that cabinet ? Is it not going to be 
searched to see that no one is concealed there ? " 

But he merely shook his head and shrunk away 
from me. He was under the spell, the spell of mys- 
tery and uncouthness which were curiously blended. 
At my right sat a thick-set, burly man with a wiry 
black beard. His face was partly muffled in the collar 
of a pea-j acket ; and somehow or other I got the im- 
pression that he was or had been a sailor. This im- 



LAKE PLEASANT, MASSACHUSETTS £53 

pression was deepened by the fact that I could see 
dimly a tattooed anchor on his hand. The tent was 
not sufficiently well lighted for me to make out the 
features of the other persons present, but they were 
evidently men and women of the sort that I have 
already described, — ignorant, hopeless, stolid crea- 
tures to whom this evening was very important in 
the history of their lives. 

In a few moments, the man who had stood at the 
entrance of the tent went from one lamp to the other 
and turned the wicks down until we were sitting in 
what was almost utter darkness. Thus we sat for at 
least five minutes with no sound audible save the 
heavy breathing of the men and an occasional ner- 
vous clearing of the throat. Then the person in 
charge said to us in a peculiarly vibrant voice: 

" Will you not sing.f^ It helps the controls to get 
eng rappo.^^ 

There was a moment more of silence, and then, 
somewhere in the darkness, a woman's quavering voice 
began to sing the hymn : 

I am so glad that our Father in Heaven 

She had gone no further than this, when another 
high-pitched voice cried out: 



254 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

" Oh, we don't believe that stuff! " 

A sort of hysterical giggle ran around the circle. 
These poor wretches had cast out all religion and yet 
they were afraid of it, even while they sat there lend- 
ing their presence to the grossest form of supersti- 
tion. But soon the man in charge began to sing a 
song in which nearly every one took part. I can re- 
member only the refrain: 

Shadowland, Shadowland, 

We 'U meet once more in Shadowland. 

They were crooning this over with long-drawn 
notes, when of a sudden, a hush fell upon them all. 
What had happened? Peering through the darkness, 
I saw a diminutive figure clad in white rise from the 
front of the cabinet and make its way clumsily, like 
a child learning to walk, toward the farther end of 
the semicircle. It approached the edge of the specta- 
tors, and after moving along for a short distance, it 
stopped. Then a woman's voice — such an anxious, 
strained, pathetic voice ! — said with a tremor : 

"Is it 'oo. Dotty.?" 

" 'Es," came the answer in a faint squeak. " 'Es, 
I 'se Dotty." 



LAKE PLEASANT, MASSACHUSETTS 255 

One could feel the thrill of a mother's love going 
out in that grotesque place to this simulated spirit- 
child. 

"Is Dotty happy?" 

" 'Es, Dotty very happy." 

The gaunt, frowsy woman seemed to be lost in an 
ecstasy of j oy. With no imagination and no gift of 
speech, she could ask no questions, save this single 
one, which, after all, was the question nearest to a 
mother's heart. If her child was happy, what more 
was there to say? And so, after the small falsetto 
voice had once more said " I 'se happy," and after 
the mother had sobbed, out of the depth of her emo- 
tion, the figure melted away into the darkness and 
was lost beside the cabinet. 

There was more singing and there was more wait- 
ing; and one figure after another would emerge, all 
of various heights and shapes, and would be recog- 
nised by one or another of those present. The ques- 
tions and answers were almost stereotyped. No one 
but myself was there to question critically. They 
were all believers and they all seemed anxious to 
know the one thing which possessed their minds — 
whether he or she who had " passed over " was really 



256 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

happy. This went on for three-quarters of an hour, 
and it would have been monotonous had it not been 
so pitiful. But then, at the last, there occurred some- 
thing which shook me from my attitude of criticism 
and produced, however crudely, an effect that was 
really startling. 

After a long interval of slow, discordant song, 
there fell upon the assemblage a silence which seemed 
likely to remain unbroken. Believing that the seance 
had come to an end, I was about to rise and leave the 
tent. But just then there rose up into the gloom a 
figure about as tall as that of a man upon his knees. 
It came slowly to the farthermost end of the semi- 
circle and paused before each person sitting there. 
Its pauses elicited no response, and it kept on, moving 
clumsily, and with a sort of horrible lurch, from seat 
to seat, until it had completed more than half the arc. 
By this time my eyes had become accustomed to the 
darkness and I could make out that the object, what- 
ever it was, appeared to be a man moving upon his 
knees. As he came nearer and nearer it was possible 
to see the dim outlines of his garb. A sort of tar- 
paulin and an oilskin covered him. Nearer and still 
nearer he came on. At last, thought I, one of these 



LAKE PLEASANT, MASSACHUSETTS 257 

spectral apparitions is going to pass before my very 
eyes. 

As it approached, my attention was attracted by 
the thick, hard breathing of the man who sat close 
at my right. There was something awful in the 
vague suggestion, something which made me feel that 
here was no ordinary imposition. My flesh crept as 
the figure drew near the place where I was sitting, 
and I was startled by the agitation of the person 
beside me. At last, the moving object reached the 
place immediately next to mine and stopped there. 
The man with the black beard leaned forward as 
though fascinated hideously, and I, too, leaned for- 
ward filled with curiosity. At that very moment the 
figure was seen to be the figure of a man. It threw 
its head back with a sort of unnatural, gruesome 
movement. Dark as the place was, I could see that 
it revealed a throat that was cut from ear to ear. 

The sailor next me gave a frightful shriek such as 
I have never heard before or since. 

" My God ! " he cried, " not that ! Not that ! " 

The lights went out as at a single stroke. The 

tent was in confusion. Men and women ran to and 

fro, stumbling over benches and hurrying toward the 

17 



258 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

entrance. With them must have gone the sailor, and 
with them, also, I very gladly went; for the horror 
of it all had become insupportable. Out among the 
cool woods, dotted with flickering lights, we made 
our way, each to his own abiding place ; and I must 
confess that I was extremely glad when I reached 
the bare plank front of the inn where I had taken 
lodgings. 

It was steadying to the nerves to shut myself in- 
my little room and light a lamp, so as to think over 
the whole episode which had just occurred. Of 
course, a believer in Spiritualism would have accepted 
the obvious explanation of it : that the black-bearded 
sailor was really a sailor and had, at some time, mur- 
dered the man whose spirit that night came back to 
haunt him. But as I am a close student of the 
methods of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and not a follower 
of Professor Crookes, I sought a purely natural ex- 
planation ; for it is only after testing and rej ecting 
all natural explanations that one should turn to the 
supernatural or even to the supra-normal. There- 
fore, it was plain enough that the whole thing was a 
preconcerted arrangement. The sailor was hired to 
play his part, and one of the Butts Brothers imper- 



LAKE PLEASANT, MASSACHUSETTS 259 

sonated the man with the knife-sht throat. The more 
I thought of it, the more I was impressed with the 
cleverness of the Butts Brothers. This little per- 
formance neatly ended the seance, and it did so in a 
most dramatic and thrilling manner. Here was 
art in the crudest possible form ; and yet the crud- 
ity, the bareness, and the simplicity, all heightened 
the effect. 

Having settled the thing satisfactorily in my mind, 
I went to bed and tried to sleep ; but the thin wooden 
partitions of the room made sleep impossible. On 
one side of me several rough-voiced men played poker 
until morning broke. On the other side, a Scandina- 
vian couple wrangled incessantly in a jargon that 
was partly English and partly Norse. Morning 
found me entirely worn out. I would not have stayed 
another day in Lake Pleasant even if I could have 
seen Eusapia Palladino herself at her best and es- 
corted by a train of visible diakkas. So, without 
waiting for any breakfast, I left the place and hur- 
ried over to the beautiful old town of Greenfield. 
There its broad street with its elms, through which 
the sunlight sifted down so peacefully on this Sunday 
morning, offered me a most comfortable shelter, a 



260 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

delicious breakfast, and a tranquillity broken only 
by the ringing of the church bells. 

It was like passing from hell to heaven to hear 
those church bells and to know that I had left behind 
me all the mountebanks, the mediums, the clairvoy- 
ants, the purveyors of blasphemy and superstition. 
The taint of them had left my soul. It was something 
more than a satisfaction — it was actually a delight 
— to j oin the throngs of orderly, right-minded, de- 
cent people who were making their way to church; 
and the harmonious singing of a fine old hymn with 
its organ accompaniment brought me up out of the 
very Pit and made my brief stay at Lake Pleasant 
seem only like the memory of a troubled and disturb- 
ing dream. 



IV 
UTICA, NEW YORK 

The gentle but sophisticated reader may express 
surprise that I should write of Utica, New York. 
Why Utica, New York? The place is one of a 
hundred undistinguished cities, the very names of 
which are usually learned from railway time-tables. 
It has played no part in history. It is too young 
to possess colonial associations. It is too old to 
stir that sort of imagination which is fired by many 
Jack-and-the-Beanstalk cities of the West. No one 
visits it for pleasure or to see its sights. It is only 
a dot upon the map. 

Quite true. Yet these are just the reasons why 
I wish to write of Utica, New York. There are 
perhaps a hundred towns in our great country of 
which the same things might be said. Ask the aver- 
age American to tell you the geographical situation 
of Utica and he will say : " Oh, it 's somewhere up 
in the middle of New York State." That is all he 
knows about it. But so, if you ask even a highly 



262 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

educated foreigner about some of our greatest cities, 
his answers will be still more vague. Name to an 
Englishman six American towns that are larger than 
Leeds or Sheffield or Edinburgh or Newcastle or 
Portsmouth — not to say York or Plymouth or 
Southampton or Dover or Yarmouth — and it is 
long odds that he will never even have heard of 
them. And as for Grermans and Frenchmen, most 
of them could not enumerate five American cities to 
save their lives; and if they tried it, they would 
surely include Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Ayres or 
Mexico. 

I shall never forget the faint look of incredulous 
surprise which flickered across the face of a dis- 
tinguished British visitor ten years ago, when I 
told him that there existed a place called Brooklyn 
within whose limits very nearly a million human 
beings dwelt. He had heard of Yankee brag, and 
he suspected me of drawing the long bow for his 
astonishment. A day or two later he crossed the 
Bridge and plunged into the welter of unrelated 
streets which make up the maze of Brooklyn. I 
feared lest he might not return, since even a New 
Yorker is quickly lost in that appalling labyrinth. 



UTICA, NEW YORK 263 

For mj part, when I visit Brooklyn (which is sel- 
dom) I never lose my grasp on Fulton Street, but 
wander up and down its noisy way, venturing only 
to gaze timidly into its purlieus and adjacent lanes. 
Yet my accomplished guest returned safely at night- 
fall, convinced, I think, of the immensity of Brooklyn, 
though he said nothing and wore an air of pro- 
found depression, the reason for which the psycholo- 
gists of Brooklyn may explain. 

Of course, foreigners will say : " Why should we 
know the names of your big cities? Their bigness 
is their only claim to notice. They have no at- 
tractions, no meaning, no background. They are 
simply great human hives, and might just as well 
be designated by numbers as by names." Yes, but 
is not the same thing true of many foreign cities.? 
Liverpool is no more significant than Brooklyn. 
Birmingham and Manchester are modern growths al- 
most as truly as are Kansas City and St. Joseph and 
Buffalo and Newark. Yet the Englishman who has 

4 

never heard of these American cities would rightly 
hold us very ignorant if we knew naught of Liver- 
pool and Manchester. 

Now, what I am coming to is this : Our attitude 



2Gi THE NEW BAEDEKER 

toward our own smaller cities represents exactly the 
foreign attitude toward our larger ones. The super- 
ciliousness of a Londoner when you speak to him 
of Denver or St. Paul is matched by the supercil- 
iousness of the Philadelphian, for instance, when you 
speak to him of Utica. And so when you ask 
" Why write of Utica. f' ", I answer in the immortal 
words of Alice — or was it the Carpenter ? — " Why 
not.? " 

Indeed, one ought to turn away from our big, 
overgrown, amorphous capitals, to the smaller cities, 
which are far more truly representative of America — 
the real America. Cosmopolitan New York, jammed 
full of Jews and Irishmen and Germans and Italians, 
and with the architecture of a dozen countries copied 
and vulgarised and caricatured; Chicago, where 
Poles and Huns and Swedes sweat in its reeking 
stockyards and make the place a gruesome Babel; 
San Francisco, dashed with Spanish and Chinese; 
and Boston, sterile and preserving little of the past 
except its querulous colonial conceit — why tell of 
these and other cities which already every one has 
seen and read of to satiety? How much more fresh 
the interest of the smaller towns, which may be only 



UTICA, NEW YORK 2Q5 

names, yet which are really very individual — com- 
pact and prosperous and undeniably American. We 
go whirling through them in a " flyer," and we 
never think that each of them is the abode of sixty 
or seventy thousand of our fellow-countrymen, form- 
ing a microcosm which deserves our study. These 
people are not ciphers in the sum of national exist- 
ence. They live and love. They work and play. 
They have their triumphs and their tragedies. Their 
churches, theatres and clubs diversify their lives. 
They thrill with local pride. They set themselves 
with earnestness to work out their own problems, 
both social and municipal. They are not half so 
hopelessly " provincial " as are the persons who 
apply to them that sneering adjective. 

The truth is that I am innocently proud of know- 
ing Utica, New York. If I had explored the sources 
of the Nile, or prowled around Uganda, or entered 
the Forbidden Palace at Pekin, or sneaked up into 
Thibet, I should never mention it. Other persons 
have done these things and they have written books 
about them, which you can procure at any library. 
But so far as I can find, no one has ever written 



266 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

anjtliing about Utica, New York, from the stand- 
point of an appreciative wanderer. And, therefore, 
as I take you with me up the slope of Genesee 
Street and past the Busy Corner, and initiate you 
into Utica, I feel naively vain, somewhat as Bartley 
Hubbard did when he showed the blushing Marcia 
how well he knew his Boston. " Wait till I show 
you Washington Street to-morrow. There 's the 
Museum. Here we are in ScoUay Square. There 's 
Hanover Street. Court crooks down that way. 
There 's Pemberton Square." 

I shall not expect you to be so much impressed 
as Marcia was ; nor, on the other hand, shall I give 
you a Catalogue of Streets in the manner of Homer 
and of Mr. Howells. In fact, I am discoursing of 
Utica purely for my own esoteric pleasure, and you 
are not bound to listen, though I hope you will. 
Even the most trivial knowledge has its value; and 
Utica is really worth your while. It gives you a 
clue to the mysteries of Central New York, upon 
which no one, before or since the time of Mr. Harold 
Frederic, has cast a single glimmer of interpretative 
light. 

And vou are not to imagine that there is any- 



UTICA, NEW YORK 267 

thing at all usual or tame or commonplace in jour- 
neying to Utica. If you have sporting blood, let me 
tell you that this journey involves the piquancy of 
peril. In going thither you shall experience the de- 
lightful inconveniences of barbarous travel. You 
shall be afflicted with uncertainty and apprehension. 
You shall feel the need of fortitude as fully as did 
Miss Menie Muriel Dowie when she explored Ru- 
thenia and the Carpathians, wearing knickerbockers, 
and — so far as I can gather from her narrative — ^ 
carrying no luggage except a silver cigarette case 
and a box of insect-powder. It is not for every 
one to go to Utica any more than it used to be for 
every one to go to Corinth. Utica lies in that vast 
and fully subjugated province which pays tribute 
to the New York Central Railroad. To reach it 
you must travel on the New York Central Railroad's 
trains ; and I assure you that if you went in palan- 
quins or on the humps of dromedaries you would 
experience no such vicissitudes or be so grievously 
uncertain as to when you would arrive. 

The New York Central Railroad was once the 
model railway of the United States. But that was 
when its chiefs were men who knew their business. 



268 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

In these days, judging from a large array of con- 
crete facts, it has been given over — I cannot tell 
by whom — to a lot of merry boys, who think it fun 
to play at railroading. It may be fun for them, but 
it is far from fun to the poor passenger who lets 
himself become a subject for their cheerful irrespon- 
sibility. Take your ticket for the Empire State 
Express, but at the same time make your peace with 
Heaven and get a policy of accident insurance. It 
may be that only freight trains will be smashed that 
day, and that you will escape unscathed; but you 
will probably be several hours late; you will not 
make connections ; your luggage will be dumped 
oif at any station other than the one you checked 
it to. If you ever find that luggage after days of 
telegraphing and complaining, you will be asked to 
pay the Company for having stored it for you at 
the place to which you didn't want it sent. Ex- 
perto crede Roberto, 

But after all, here is where the romance of a 
voyage to Utica begins. Utica itself is loyal to the 
New York Central Railroad. It received long ago 
a railway station, which is now dilapidated to the 



UTICA, NEW YORK 269 

last degree; but Utica is loyal. It hugs its chains 
and deeply reverences the satraps of the " Central." 
And perhaps one would n't wish this sentiment to 
disappear, since from it springs a curious cult which 
I shall presently explain. This is the cult of Mile- 
age. You can buy a little pasteboard book in which 
is furled a yard or so of flimsy paper marked off 
by lines, each tiny section representing a mile of 
transportation on the " Central " and its tributary 
roads. This seems like a simple, every-day arrange- 
ment ; but in Utica, New York, it is n't simple — 
not a bit. As I said, it is the subject of a cult, and 
the basis of a sort of ephemeral aristocracy. These 
pasteboard covers, enclosing the yard or so of flimsy 
paper, are precisely the same thing as a patent of 
nobility. Originally, the combination was called " a 
mileage book " ; but by a process of linguistic at- 
trition, the dialect of Utica describes it as " a Mile- 
age." Now if you possess a Mileage you are no 
longer a common person, one of the plebecula, a 
terrcB filius. A halo of distinction shimmers around 
your head. You exhale the odour of a special sanc- 
tity. Trainmen who before have grunted at you, 
immediately lout low. All doors are open to you. 



270 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

Conductors will stop trains for you at stations 
where no stoppage is permitted to the common or 
garden variety of traveller. " Nice customs curtsey to 
great kings," said Henry V. In Utica and its vicinity 
they curtsey to the person who owns a Mileage. 

And you do not even have to show your Mileage. 
Just look steadily at the varlet whom you would 
command and say " Mileage ! " It is quite enough. 
He is brought to heel at once, and bows obsequi- 
ously. I have often wondered why unscrupulous men 
who really have no Mileage, do not use the magic 
word and thus unlawfully secure its benefits. But 
I have evolved a theory that only the actual pos- 
session of a Mileage can bestow the true patrician 
air which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere in Utica, 
New York. If you tried to act 8.s though you had 
a Mileage when you had n't one, something in your 
manner would betray you. Such is the psychology 
of the Mileage. I once heard two natives of Utica 
arguing earnestly over some controverted topic. One 
of them finally exclaimed: 

" I '11 bet you a Mileage that I 'm right ! " 
But the other, eyeing him with elaborate disdain 
replied : 



UTICA, NEW YORK 271 

" Huh ! You look as though you had a Mileage, 
don't you ! " 

So, you see, a Mileage is like an amulet or the 
Hapsburg lip. If you have it, why then you have 
it ; but if you have n't it, pretence will not avail. 
The lowliest trainman will throw you off the back 
platform without turning a hair. 

It is worth noting, in order to give a scientific- 
ally complete account of this very interesting mat- 
ter, that there is a Greater and also a Lesser Mile- 
age. The former costs $20 and will entitle you to 
a thousand miles of danger, while the Lesser Mile- 
age costs but $10 and will permit you to risk your 
life for only five hundred miles. These two Mile- 
ages represent, as it were, two different grades or 
titles in the Central's peerage, corresponding, let 
us say, respectively, to a Marquisate and an Earl- 
dom. I wish that there were even loftier Mileages ; 
for then I should save up my money and buy a 
Mileage of fifty thousand miles. It would make me 
at the very least a Duke in Utica; while a Mileage 
of a hundred thousand miles would be equivalent to 
a strain of the blood royal. 

And there is still another cult — a very different 



272 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

one — which thrives in Utica, New York, and, in- 
deed, along the whole line of the Central. It is not 
aristocratic in its nature, but gastronomic; and I 
am delighted to publish here the results of my 
investigations. 

The object of this cult is what is called the fried- 
cake. In writing down the word, be sure to hyphen- 
ate it; and, in pronouncing it, remember that it is 
an irrational spondee to be uttered with the trochaic 
beat and time — thus, " fH^6Z-cake," just as Profes- 
sor Brander Matthews discourses on the short-story 
which (to his mind) is something different from the 
short story. Now the fried-cake is not an indige- 
nous product, peculiar to Utica. Roughly speaking, 
the fried-cake belt extends from the Hudson River 
westward to Lake Erie; and the excellence of the 
fried-cake itself increases in a sort of geometrical 
ratio with every hundred miles. Thus, at Albany 
it is possible to procure and eat a fried-cake; but 
if you are wise, you will not do so. At Utica, the 
fried-cake attains a degree of deliciousness which 
is supposed to justify the cult. At Syracuse it 
ravishes the palate. At Buffalo it is a gastronomic 
dream — a Lucullan climax — an epicurean ecstasy. 



UTICA, NEW YORK 273 

At least I have been told so. I once knew a girl 
who used up an immensely long strip out of a Mile- 
age, ill travelling all the way from Boonville to Syra- 
cuse, just to eat some fried-cakes after an abstinence 
of several years. 

My comment ariolum must prove rather unsatisfac- 
tory as an explanation of just what a fried-cake 
really is. I may imperfectly describe it as a cruller 
that is trying to lead the simple life. It looks like 
a cruller; only its golden brownish circle is more 
plump and puffy, and the hole in the middle is 
smaller. The fried-cake is never greasy, and the 
interior is of a beautifully homogeneous texture - — 
light and firm and fine. I am obliged to confess 
that I have never eaten one. In the railway station 
at Utica, I have walked cautiously around a glass 
cylinder which was full of them; and once, near 
Utica, I bought one and broke it open to see what 
it looked like inside. But I am a timid soul when 
it comes to fooling with new kinds of food. I will 
secure all the evidence that can be had, and will 
most minutely question those who really know; but 
eating is too serious a matter to be made an adjunct 

of sociology. Thus in France, I have sojourned in 

18 



274 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

Caen without touching any of its famous tripe. I 
have escaped from Marseilles quite conscious-stricken 
and yet secretly relieved because its huge snails had 
never tempted me. In sundry picturesque and bacil- 
liferous towns of Italy, I have turned away from 
some very remarkable concoctions of oil and garlic 
which I knew were necessary to make me genuinely 
Weltreisig; and in Stuttgart I have stubbornly 
refused to do even so much as taste a certain 
dark-blue soup which smelled as though a poodle 
had been washed in it. These things I confess with 
shame; but we all have our limitations, and this 
is one of mine. Therefore, let me simply note the 
fact that in Utica, the fried-cake is locally regarded 
with delight and reverence, and that it probably is 
good to eat — or at least, that it is good for 
Uticans. 

And what sort of human beings are these Uticans ? 
When you stroll around the corner whereon Bagg's 
Hotel has stood for generations — and where even 
in the eighteenth century, Bagg's Tavern furnished 
accommodations for man and beast — you will feel 
that here is one American city which is not cursed 



UTICA, NEW YORK 275 

with our national unrest. The hackmen do not raise 
a noisy clamour at your coming. They are all 
asleep within their hacks, from whose open doors 
protrude quiescent legs. As you turn into Genesee 
Street — the Grand Boulevard of Utica — there is 
a refreshing absence of all noise or stir or bustle. 
The shopmen lounge before their shops and rumi- 
nate throughout the day. The small boys do not run 
or yell or scuffle, but are statuesque in their appar- 
ent immobility. The men and women whom you see 
upon the street stroll leisurely along as though, to 
them, Time had become Eternity. Even the trolley- 
cars move up and down with little noise and with 
the minimum of speed. They will stop for you as 
long as you desire. You never have to dash at 
them, and then hear the sharp clang of the bell and 
feel the jerk of the starting car as it throws you 
off your feet. It is not thus in Utica, New York. 
That blessed town has never heard the irritating 
formula, " Step lively ! " 

Its atmosphere of deep repose does not connote 
vacuity or sluggishness or crass stolidity. You are 
not entering Boeotia nor are you in crasso aere^ 
when you saunter up the slope of Genesee Street. 



276 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

Go into any shop and you will find a friendly in- 
terest displayed in your requirements. Accost any 
person in the street and ask a question, and he will 
be entirely at your disposal. These people have not 
merely time to give you, but good will. In certain 
portions of New England, you may observe pre- 
cisely the same touch of " neighbourliness " ; but in 
New England it is always united with a rabid curi- 
osity as to who you are and where you come from. 
When you accept a casual favour, you have to pay 
for it by gratifying this sharp-edged inquisitiveness. 
Again, in many Western towns and cities, there 
is the same American friendliness, but you have to 
pay for it by listening to what men tell you of 
themselves. In Utica, there seems to prevail a natu- 
ral good breeding which neither intrudes upon your 
personal concerns nor makes insistent raids upon 
your patience. And this is why I like so much the 
men and women and even the small children of Utica, 
New York. They all possess what is one of the 
most essential elements of true gentihty, — a happy 
combination of reticence about themselves, and in 
turn a willingness to respect your reticence. The 
gimlet-minded Yankee and the bragging Westerner 



UTICA, NEW YORK 277 

might both, to their advantage, learn useful lessons 
from the citizens of Utica. I believe that in Syra- 
cuse, they speak scornfully of Utica as a " dead " 
city. Rather it is a city where every one has time 
to live and to enjoy life with a hedonistic philoso- 
phy, about which there is something Horatian if 
not positively Cyrenaic. You can see nothing Eng- 
lish in the external aspect of the place; yet its at- 
mosphere is like that which gives mellowness to 
many good old Enghsh towns such as Coventry and 
Canterbury. 

Those persons who are fond of searching deeply 
into the origin of things may find an explanation 
of Utica's tranquillity in the fact that its real im- 
portance came to it when the Erie Canal was first 
constructed. That famous waterway cuts Genesee 
Street at right angles and is spanned by a long 
bridge. I love to lean over the railing and look 
down into the unstirred water, observing now and 
then a broad canal-boat lazily gliding on its way. 
The sight is restful in these days of frantic loco- 
motion; and perhaps when Utica was young, the 
calm spirit of the canal infused itself into the nature 
of the inhabitants. However this may be, all things 



278 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

are quite in keeping. There was a time when canal- 
boats connoted something ludicrous to me; but now 
they typify repose and peace. They are the gon- 
dolas of Utica and they still remain with her; 
^whereas Venice — queen of the Adriatic and steeped 
in a rich inheritance of romantic memories — has 
crazily torn oif her chaplet and has yielded up her 
beautiful lagoons to panting, pluttering, imperti- 
nent little launches in which lovers can no longer 
dream by moonlight in each other's arms, with the 
ripple of the water making an accompaniment so 
exquisite as to seem almost divine — the very soul 
of poetry and music, in perfect harmony with that 
purest phase of passion whose throb is subtly 
stilled by a tenderness even more irresistible and 
overpowering. 

After you pass the canal, Genesee Street begins 
to rise sharply and to take on a different character. 
No more small bakeries, tiny cigar shops, micro- 
scopic marts for the sale of hardware, marked-down 
" gents' furnishing goods," and sausages. The street 
broadens and, while still commercial, it has the air 
of a large and lucrative commerce. More than fifty 



UTICA, NEW YORK 279 

years ago, an English traveller wrote of Utica that 
it was redolent of " a fat prosperity." You begin 
to feel this as you ascend the incHne. Everything 
looks well-to-do. It is perhaps significant that the 
handsomest building in the place is a savings-bank, 
with the proud appearance of a Doge's palace. 
Comfortable folk are these Uticans. And as to the 
shops, one feels that he would willingly owe several 
thousand dollars to any of them. Here, too, you 
"begin to perceive traces of other than commercial 
influences. I note in the window of a colossal " em- 
porium," a sign in black and white that arrests my 
wandering steps. 

"WE CARRY A COMPLETE LINE OF 

STATUARY. HAVE YOU SEEN IT.? 

COME IN." 

Now never have I yet seen what may be truthfully 
called a complete line of statuary. The Vatican 
has a wealth of plastic treasures ; and in the Museo 
Capitolino one can find much to interest him. The 
same thing is true of the Louvre and of the British 
Museum. But still, none of these collections, how- 
ever wonderful, carries a complete line of statuary. 
To think that the Muses should have kindly guided 



280 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

me to the only place in the world where they do 
carry a complete line, and that this place should be 
Utica, New York! 

I enter with all the eagerness of one who humbly 
waits on Art. A floor-walker with a tightly but- 
toned frock-coat and umbrageous whiskers receives 
me. Why does one feel an instinctive aversion to 
a floor-walker .f^ But that question involves a whole 
treatise by itself. This floor-walker is a real one. 
I accost him: 

" I believe that you carry a complete line of 
statuary? " 

" Sure ! This way, please. Two aisles to the right, 
and then the door at the end." 

He even follows me thither, it being summer, and 
no one having anything in particular to do. I reach 
the salon which is draped with crimson plush. In it 
is certainly a line of statuary. I am convinced that 
the Italo- American or Crosby Street School of Sculp- 
ture is well represented. Before me is a semi- 
translucent figure of a Venus — the Venus Uticen- 
sis, no doubt. She is undraped. Now the Venus 
di Milo is very slightly draped, but she is superbly 
unconscious of it. The Venus de' Medici is utterly 



UTICA, NEW YORK 281 

undraped, but she is anxious that you shall notice 
it. The Venus Uticensis, however, is undraped and 
is very much perturbed about it. She may have 
been unconventionally bathing in Oneida Lake, and 
some one may have stolen all her clothes. The re- 
sult is that she feels inwardly horrified, but is try- 
ing to conceal the fact by an air of brazen indif- 
ference which deceives no one. Really she is going 
to cry in about half a minute, and call somebody a 
mean, horrid thing ! As I don't want to be the per- 
son whom she will denounce, I turn hastily away. 
But I will write it down here for record, that I 
believe the Venus Uticensis to be a perfectly re- 
spectable young woman, and I know that she makes 
an honest living by working six days every week in 
a knitting-factory. 

A girl with her hair much roughed and ratted Is 
showing two stout ladies and a thin straw-coloured 
gentleman around. They are much impressed by 
the complete line of statuary. The floor-walker 
looks on with an Olympian air of condescension. 
Somehow, that floor-walker gets upon my nerves. 

'' Excuse me," I say to the ratted one, " may I 
ask where you keep your collection of doJcana? " 



282^ THE NEW BAEDEKER 

" I dunno," she replies. " I guess Mr. Higgs can 
tell you." 

Mr. Higgs is evidently the floor-walker. He comes 
forward with an air of absolute sufficiency. I re- 
peat my question. 

" Those er-objects," he remarks condescendingly, 
*' are not included in our art collection. They — 
they ain't statuary I guess." 

" They are primitive statuary," I answer. " And 
I don't see anything Mycenaean." 

The floor-walker stares with a dawning insolence. 

"Say!" he ejaculates. "What are you giving 
us, anyhow? " 

" And there does n't seem to be any piece of 
statuary which shows the archaic grin," I return 
placidly. " Now you know I am rather fond of the 
archaic grin. And could n't you bring out some- 
thing that was done by Scopas.?" 

The floor-walker drops his floor-walkian manner. 

" Look here," says he, " if you think that you 
can come in here and guy this place, you 're in for 
a j olt, that 's all." 

" Pardon me," say I in a carrying voice. " You 
advertise that you carry a complete line of statuary ; 



UTICA, NEW YORK 283 

yet, so far as I can judge, it is very incomplete. 
Are you trying to impose upon the public? " 

The two stout ladies and the straw-coloured gentle- 
man are hstening intently. Up to this time they have 
examined the various works of art with admiration. 
But now a doubtful sort of expression steals over 
their faces. The floor-walker notices this with dis- 
may and so does the much ratted girl. Probably 
these visitors are persons of high degree and pos- 
sessed of Mileages. The floor-walker drops his 
voice to a sort of abject whine. 

" Now look here," says he, aside, " you don't 
want to queer our business, do you.'' Of course we 
ain't got them things you mention. But please 
don't talk about them so loud." 

There is a look of appeal also in the eyes of the 
much ratted girl ; and so I hold my peace and stroll 
out into the sunshine and continue on my way to 
the higher levels of Genesee Street. After passing 
the principal hotel, which is delicately tinted to the 
hue of scrambled eggs, one finds the Faubourg St. 
Germain of Utica. Great trees cast a pleasant 
shadow from above; and on either side are well- 
built and extremely comfortable-looking mansions 



284 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

covered with ivy and surrounded by great stretches 
of green lawn. Here dwells the real patriciate of 
Utica — families, I suppose, of which every member 
always owns a Mileage. Scarcely any one is visible 
on the verandas, though now and then a girl in 
white may be discovered engaged in reading. Some 
one — I think that it was Mr. Henry James — said, 
as much as twenty years ago, that the appearance 
of American women changes gradually as one goes 
\Vest, and that the dainty type which is noticeable 
on Manhattan Island becomes blunter and shows 
features less delicately chiselled. I should not like 
to commit myself upon so controversial a question. 
I am willing to say, however, that whatever differ- 
ences may exist between the girls of Utica and those 
of the metropolis, the former look as though they 
were very certain to get married. What pleases 
me is the fact that they still retain the true Amer- 
ican self-possession and absence of self-consciousness. 
They are frank and wholesome, and they have never 
heard of chaperons; and that is why, perhaps, the 
men respect them all the more. If you are simply 
passing through the town, just spend a little time 
in the beautiful Public Library and watch the gentle- 



UTICA, NEW YORK 285 

mannered and very courteous young ladles who pre- 
side over the different departments of that useful 
institution. You will not find a more winsome- 
looking or more amiable and good-humoured bevy, 
no matter where you go. 

The women are much more attractive than the 
men in Utica, though the latter are just as well 
deserving of your good opinion ; for they are kindly 
and genuine and honest. One could wish that they 
would bestow a little more attention on their clothes 
and on matters which have reference to good form. 
Down by the shore of Oneida Lake there is a place 
called Sylvan Beach, which in its primitive condi- 
tion must have been extremely beautiful, with woods 
and water and a strip of strand. It has been turned 
into a rather awful congeries of shoot-the-chutes, 
and merry-go-rounds, and soda-water stands ; and 
the earth is disfigured by empty paper-bags and 
peanut- shells, and the remnants of half-eaten lunches. 
It is entirely respectable, though depressing; and 
the advertisements which tell of it describe it as 
"The Coney Island of Central New York." One 
imaginative journalist of Utica even writes of it by 
night as " The Great White Way.' 



J5 



286 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

Could anything be more pathetic? Here are 
dancing pavilions, where any one may dance with 
anybody else ; and it touches you to see the palpitat- 
ing gratitude with which rather pretty and gentle- 
looking girls accept the attention of unshaven men, 
who waltz in their shirt-sleeves and often while 
holding a half -burnt " stogy " between their yellow 
teeth. Here again, however, is another subject that 
I cannot now pursue — the over-valuation which 
women set on men. But, as I said, it is all deco- 
rous to the last degree; and somehow the whole 
thing harmonises. This is America as it used to 
be, with something of its crudity, with a great deal 
of its homeliness, but with its fine simphcity and 
goodness and unspoiled faith in what is right. And 
^ so, please follow me and learn a lesson while you 
receive some pleasure as I have done, in studying 
the quinta essentia of Utica, New York. 



V 

TRENTON FALLS, NEW YORK 

I WONDER how many persons, living beyond a radius 
of fifty miles from the place, have ever heard of 
Trenton Falls. Its name suggests New Jersey, yet 
it is situated in the central part of New York State, 
in a pleasant and restful obscurity. You may search 
many maps without discovering it. You never see 
it mentioned in the newspapers. To nearly all the 
world it has no existence whatsoever. 

The very fact of its obscurity affords a striking 
comment on the change which has come over the 
social life of the United States. Fifty years ago 
it would have been quite as absurd to ask " Where is 
Trenton Falls.? " as it would be now to ask " Where 
is Newport ? " or " Where is Palm Beach ? " In 
the fifties there were only three or four watering 
places in the whole country. Newport was one, the 
White Sulphur Springs of Virginia was another, 
Saratoga was a third. And with these, Trenton 
Falls was numbered, just a little less elaborate than 



288 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

Newport but quite as much a seat of fashion as 
Saratoga, which in those days was sought out for 
its mineral springs and not for its gambhng-rooms 
or for its race-tracks. 

When Anthony Trollope visited this country in 
1861, so that he might write his book on North 
America — a book which is difficult now to procure, 
but which well deserves re-reading — he went a long 
distance out of his way to visit Trenton Falls, be- 
cause, writes he, " I had heard its beauty mentioned 
in London thirty years before." When N. P. Willis 
was commissioned by a London publisher to edit a 
book filled with illustrations of the most picturesque 
places in America, great importance was given to 
Trenton Falls. The place then drew to itself many 
travellers even from Europe. The registers of the 
old hotel, which are still preserved, contain auto- 
graphs that would excite the envy of a collector. 
There, on the yellowing pages, are the names of 
Jenny Lind and of the Earl of Derby (then Lord 
George Stanley and afterward Prime Minister) who 
was thought to be the most eloquent orator of his 
time in England. There, too, is the big obstreperous- 
looking sign-manual of Trollope himself, the deli- 



TRENTON FALLS, NEW YORK 289 

cately written signature of Willis, and those of 
many contemporaries of Willis. The books are 
particularly rich in autographs of statesmen from 
the South — men who at that time still guided 
the destinies of the nation and regarded the Abo- 
litionists as a small and insignificant cluster of 
fanatics. 

Trenton Falls, indeed, was a favourite resort of 
wealthy Southern planters and their families, who 
came there to spend the entire season, bringing with 
them carriages and carriage-horses and fine thorough- 
bred hunters, with a retinue of well-fed slaves who 
grinned and showed their white teeth, quite uncon- 
scious that they were the object of ill-directed sym- 
pathy; for they would not have accepted freedom 
on any terms whatever. Even now in the lofts of 
the hotel you may see, carefully stored away, the 
rude wooden bedsteads and the mattresses on which 
these sable retainers slept through the cool nights 
after their masters and mistresses had finished danc- 
ing and had retired to their own apartments. Tren- 
ton Falls was then what newspapers would now de- 
scribe as " a social centre." It was one of the very 

few social centres in the United States. 

19 



290 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

In this sense its glory has long since departed; 
yet the memory of what it has been makes it full 
of reminiscence and suggestion. It is forgotten 
and unknown save to the very few ; but to these 
few it has a charm more fascinating than is exerted 
by any of the newer watering-places which have 
sprung up in the past twenty years and which en- 
tertain successful soap-makers and manufacturers of 
breakfast foods, and others whose names suggest 
nothing save mere money. Beside the old-time sim- 
plicity of Trenton Falls, the garish, lavish, noisy 
life of Palm Beach or Monterey seems meretricious ; 
while Atlantic City and Long Branch and Elberon 
and the Hamptons are positively vulgar. They are 
like painted women in the presence of some beauti- 
ful old lady whose fine lace cap and snowy hair 
give her a dignity that by contrast reveals the 
wanton's cheapness. 

But some one will naturally be moved to interrupt 
me and inquire " Where is this Trenton Falls, and 
why did it lose its old prestige and sink into ob- 
livion ? " Trenton Falls nestles among the foothills 
of the Adirondacks ; and it was the opening of the 
Adirondacks (or the North Woods, as they call 



TRENTON FALLS, NEW YORK 291 

them there) which relegated Trenton Falls to in- 
significance. Down into the late sixties the great 
Adirondack region was known only to the natives 
who occupied infrequent " shacks " amid its wilder- 
ness, or to an occasional hunter who penetrated its 
vast forests in search of the game that was so 
abundant. Li time, Adirondack Murray, that ec- 
centric sporting clergyman, began to write about 
the region. Little by little it was explored. Lines 
of railway crept into its recesses. Hotels were built 
along its lakes. Then fashion, which had remained 
contentedly at Trenton Falls, moved slowly onward 
into the wide-spreading woods. Trenton Falls be- 
came a sort of derelict. Whereas the railway had 
formerly ended there, now the long expresses, with 
their Pullmans and their dining-cars, thunder by 
it without stopping; and only a few local trains, 
when flagged, pause at its little station to allow an 
occasional passenger to descend. Luxurious persons 
whirl through it to the Fulton chain of lakes or, 
further still, to Whiteface or Paul Smith's. If they 
ever look out of the car windows as they rush past 
Trenton Falls, they see nothing but a tiny platform, 
a single house half hidden by the trees, and a long 



292 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

rough board-walk extending precipitately down the 
edge of a steep country road. 

But what you see from a Pullman is not really 
Trenton Falls. Take a slow Black River accom- 
modation train at Utica and it will convey you 
thither, nosing its way slowly and with much labori- 
ous panting, on an up-grade through Marcy, Stitt- 
ville, Holland Patent and Barneveld, making its way 
into the low-lying foot-hills. The cars will be full 
of women and children dressed in rustic garb, and 
they will buy apples and popcorn from the train 
boy, and candy of a kind that you yourself would 
hardly care to purchase. In time, after a moment 
of excessive effort, the engine stops at Trenton 
FaUs. 

I feel that it is rather unwise on my part to write 
about this place. I discovered it by accident, and I 
ought to keep all knowledge of it to myself; but the 
call of the pen is too strong to be resisted; and be- 
sides, there is no pleasure in making a discovery if 
you cannot tell of it and glory in it. And so I will 
explain here how you get off at the little red station 
and go down the steep board-walk, past sweet smelling 
clumps of forest and sunny meadowland until you 



TRENTON FALLS, NEW YORK 293 

cross a rustic bridge that spans a quiet mouse- 
coloured little brook, and then you come unexpect- 
edly upon a large and very pleasant-looking inn, 
shadowed by great trees. A broad veranda runs 
about it, extended on one side to a width of thirty or 
forty feet, so as to form a fine pavilion. In front of 
the house is a massive octagonal stone, where once 
rested a telescope upon a tripod. Further on is a 
dense grove, whose tree-tops are pierced by a grace- 
ful minaret which is in reality a water-tower. This 
inn is the place that was once the summer home 
of many distinguished people, though now is quite 
forgotten by the larger world. Li the days before 
the Civil War, a long parterre of flowers stretched 
in front of the hotel with walks bisecting it. Now it 
is overrun by clover, and only a few stray rose 
bushes still remain. Yet the impression is not an 
impression of ruin and decay. Here is a restfulness 
and a sense of peace which are very grateful to one 
who comes from the noisy, heated city to find quite 
unexpectedly a pleasant welcome, with no one to mo- 
lest him, and with an unlimited amount of space at 
his disposal. If you are of an easy-going disposition 
you can make yourself at home in an exceedingly 



294 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

short time. Everything will be done for you within 
reason, and it will be done as though you were not a 
stranger, but an honoured guest. I never have 
known anything more friendly than the spontaneous 
^hospitality of this secluded inn. Your wants and 
even your little whims will be attended to out of pure 
friendship, and you will find yourself living in the 
America of sixty years ago — not that part of Amer- 
ica which Dickens saw and which Mrs. Trollope 
guyed unmercifully, but the part which was really 
best, and in which every one respected both himself 
and others without regard to class distinctions. 

Thus, you will not be surprised, after you have 
had a most satisfying dinner, if the young lady who 
waited on you, appears presently in the drawing-room 
and plays, with an excellent touch on the piano, some 
music that is very good. Why should she not? She 
is as refined and gentle-mannered as any of the 
women whom she serves ; and in her trim white shirt- 
waist and with her neatly arranged dark hair she is 
quite as pretty as any girl whom you would see in 
a whole day's journey. Indeed, the small staff of the 
hotel are such that you will like them from the very 
moment of your arrival. They are glad to see you 



TRENTON FALLS, NEW YORK 295 

when you come, and they are sorry when jou go ; and 
they are glad and sorry because they think of you 
as of a friend — and this again belongs to the 
America that was. 

It is quite inexplicable to me that thousands of 
families go further up into the woods and live in 
stuffy, noisy hostelries, in small close rooms, and be- 
set by the black flies of the Adirondacks, when they 
might for less money have spacious apartments and 
full exemption from all vexation in this large, ram- 
bling, roomy place. There are human beings, how- 
ever, who really love to be packed like sardines into 
sweat-boxes in the summer months. You can see 
them in herds and troops at Coney Island, and in 
Central Park on Sundays ; and you can find them 
also scattered through the Adirondacks, thoroughly 
uncomfortable, yet not aware that anything is better. 
I am always sorry for these people. They do not 
understand how to enjoy their leisure time. They 
have not learned the art of resting. Unless, indeed, 
you have learned this art yourself, perhaps you 
would not care for Trenton Falls. But here you can 
stroll through beautifully wooded paths, and then lie 
basking in a broad expanse of meadow under a sun 



296 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

which bums your face and makes it tingle with a 
healthy glow, but under whose rays you never swelter. 
The clear cool breeze blows full and strong. The 
air is dry. The scents of the forest are deHcious. 
There is one particular hill which rises almost per- 
pendicularly, and up which the climb gives glorious 
exercise. When you reach the summit you find a sort 
of grassy cup in which ^ou may lie, stratus membra, 
and from which, as you look up, you can see nothing 
save the intense blue of the summer sky and the 
fleecy snow-white clouds that drift lazily across it. 
It gives you a feeling as though you were the only 
human being in the world ; for no sound comes to 
the ear save the liquid note of a bird or the distant 
tinkle of a cow-bell far below you. If you lie upon 
your face and look over the edges of the crater, you 
will see spread out beneath you a rustic picture that 
is absolutely perfect. Woods that fling their dark 
shadows out into the sunlit fields, long stretches of 
green turf and clustering trees above which now and 
then curls up a wreath of smoke from a hidden chim- 
ney — for my part, I can imagine nothing more abso- 
lutely soothing to one who is world-worn and weary 
of that strife which saps vitality, than to lie in tliis 




O 



O 

o 






o 



TRENTON FALLS, NEW YORK 297 

green cup, and think of nothing, but just enjoy to 
the very full the great and beautiful and glorious 
freedom of it all. And not far beyond is a chain of 
shimmering crystal lakes which you can visit if you 
care to, and if you are not contented with the good 
old motto, dolce far niente. 

There is one rather curious phenomenon about 
Trenton Falls. It is only fourteen miles from Utica, 
and Utica in summer is one of the most torrid places 
upon earth. Yet when that city is baking and sim- 
mering and stewing with intense humidity, and when 
the thermometer is standing there perhaps at ninety- 
eight, in Trenton Falls you will be so cool that you 
can readily wear winter clothing without discomfort. 
Five miles further north the heat comes on again ; 
and in the Adirondacks the days are often quite in- 
tolerable. But in Trenton Falls you find it difficult 
to believe that summer days are anywhere oppres- 
sive; and towards evening you go into the smoking- 
room of the hotel and kindle a great roaring fire of 
logs which you yourself may gather in the grove a 
stone's throw from the door. 

I suppose it is a sort of primitive, aboriginal in- 
stinct, this love of gleaning firewood. One feels the 



298 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

thrill of finding hidden treasure when he comes upon 
a clump of pine trees under which there lie thousands 
of dark brown cones, dried and seasoned by the sun 
and wind of years. And you can also discover some 
woodcutter's camp, where there are huge chips and 
great pine knots and soKd blocks of hickory and oak. 
With a great basket you can collect a mighty mass 
of fuel and heap it up for your own use in a recess of 
the smoking-room, which then becomes to you a sort 
of cave like that of the Forty Thieves. You feed the 
fire sparingly with a certain avarice which grows 
upon you. Every cone and every pine knot seems as 
precious as pure gold, because you have gathered it 
yourself and have prowled and wandered in the woods 
in search of it. This feeling is absurd, of course, 
because there is fuel lying all about in a barbaric opu- 
lence, enough to last for fifty years ; yet none the 
less, the stores of it which you collect are dear to 
you, and the great fire which flames out for you at 
night is a thing of your own creation. 

I suppose that I ought to say something about 
the Falls which have given the place its name; but 
the truth is that I have never seen them except at a 
considerable distance. When the river is full, they 



TRENTON FALLS, NEW YORK 299 

are magnificent in their rush and sweep as they thun- 
der down the rocks into the extraordinary gorge 
below. But a great cataract inspires me with a sort 
of nameless horror. It seems to call and beckon one 
and bid him cast himself into its swirling foam ; and 
there is something actually evil in the sinister green 
of the water as it gathers itself up for the terrific 
leap. And so you may read what TroUope says 
about the Falls or what Willis has written of them. 
As for me, however, I keep them half a mile away 
from me, and go near them only when a protracted 
drought has reduced the waterfall to a mere trickling 
stream. The lower falls behind the post-office are 
as much as I can stand. But the gorge into which 
the Falls crash down is really wonderful. On each 
side of it are woods which few have penetrated save 
where a little path runs timidly along. As you look 
down over a slender railing, you gaze into a tremen- 
dous rocky chasm which cannot be matched on this 
side of the canons of the Colorado. You feel as Kim 
felt when he sat with the Red Lama and the Hillmen 
on " the top of the world " letting his legs hang over 
the edge and chattering, while beneath him there was 
a sheer drop into an abyss unfathomable. Geologists 



SOO THE NEW BAEDEKER 

know this gorge and they often visit it, because it 
tells strange stories of the time when the world was 
young. Its savage sternness is in striking contrast 
with the peaceful countryside about it. 

I suppose that people who are very rich are 
wise in never visiting Trenton Falls, because most 
persons who are very rich find pleasure only in the 
spending of their money. In Trenton Falls you can 
spend no money, since there is nothing there to buy 
unless, to be sure, you have a juvenile taste for 
" bulls' eyes," which are sold at the little post-office, 
the only " store " within two miles. It is much more 
gratifying, however, to sit upon a cracker barrel and 
converse with the postmaster's assistant, who is a 
profound philosopher. He takes life as easily as did 
Horace or Aristippus. His talk is very interesting, 
and his questions are sometimes puzzling. When you 
go in to buy a dozen postage-stamps, you never can 
be sure what he will ask you. One day he wished 
to know whether I had ever been to Brooklyn, and if 
so, what the place was like. I answered the first part 
of this question very readily, but I fear that the sec- 
ond part elicited only a hazy and most indefinite 
response. For what living man can give an adequate 




Trenton Falls 



TRENTON FALLS, NEW YORK 301 

idea of Brooklyn? Some day a genius will arise who 
will write a book on Brooklyn and will formulate 
on paper the essence of the town; but that will be 
a long while hence. The next time that I visited the 
post-office, the philosopher was on a different tack. 
He asked me to explain the cause of thunder, and I 
explained it volubly and at considerable length. 
Afterward I looked the matter up, and found my 
explanation altogether wrong. I doubt, however, 
whether it did any harm, for the philosopher, after 
listening to me and ruminating for a while, observed : 

" Yes, I guess that something busts up there " — 
which was not at all what I had said, but which was ob- 
viously the theory which he had concocted in his mind. 

The inn at Trenton Falls is a sedate aild quiet 
place, unhke those popular " resorts " where there is 
much dancing and flirting and where young men and 
maidens sit on the verandas and make experimental 
love to one another. Not that there are no young 
men and maidens there, but they do not seem to 
understand the game. One night, after I had gone 
to bed, I heard amid the stillness of the night a 
hurried, almost agonising protest from the grove 
a little way beyond. 



302 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

" Stop, Jimmy, stop ! " 

It was a girl's voice and it rather made me jump. 
Again and again it was repeated, until at last I went 
to the open window and looked out. There in the 
moonlight was a very pretty girl and likewise an ath- 
letic youth. My first thought was, of course, that he 
was stealing kisses from her. But no, it was nothing 
so romantic, or if you like, so shocking. He was 
simply twisting her arm, and when he twisted it too 
much she squealed and shrieked. Then he would stop, 
and the two would chat most amicably. Presently he 
would twist her arm again and her cries would pierce 
the air. This went on for a considerable time, and 
then they parted, he going up the " pipe-line " 
through the woods, and. she returning to the society 
of her family. It seemed rather mysterious ; but 
after giving it much thought, I came to the general 
conclusion that there are many ways of making love ; 
and that, on the whole, to twist a girl's arm in the 
intervals of moonlight confidences is as harmless a 
way of doing so as any other. 

When all the sounds of night are stilled except the 
sounds of nature — the indefinable voices of the for- 
est, and the murmur of the wind — then Trenton 



TRENTON FALLS, NEW YORK 303 

Falls seems to revert to the days when it was known 
and sought by very many, and was not left to be dis- 
covered by a casual stranger like myself. Standing 
at my window with its little panes of glass, I observe 
inscriptions scratched upon them with a diamond. 
" George H. Brown and Wife " — " William C. Em- 
mons and Wife, New York " — " A. L. Clark and 
Wife, 1857 " — these are inscriptions as full of 
meaning as those which you find upon the walls and 
monuments of Pompeii. They tell of brides and 
grooms who came here on their wedding journey, 
and you know that the bride, with her engagement 
ring beside the plain gold band, carefully set down 
her husband's name and her new designation. There 
is a bit of tender pride in that word " Wife," written 
with a capital letter, and it touches one to think back 
through the years and to wonder where are now those 
who were then girls and who wrote the names upon 
the window-pane full sixty years ago. Dead perhaps, 
or if not dead, descending to their graves as very 
aged persons. There came the time when they no 
longer wrote " George H. Brown and Wife," but be- 
came " Mr. and Mrs. George H. Brown." Their 
romance reached its end. The ardours of their first 



304 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

love cooled. The one entrancing flush of poetry 
passed into the prose of every-day existence. But 
the romance and the poetry still linger about this 
ancient house, where the outward signs of it remain. 
And so, when you look out into the moonlit grove 
and upon the meadows and the distant Deerfield Hills, 
you may revive in imagination a picture of the past. 
Before you, once again, the great parterre of 
flowers is in bloom and heavy with the dews of night. 
Candle-lights are gleaming from all the windows. 
There is a sound of music from the broad pavilion. 
Beautiful women — beautiful despite their crinoline 
and their unbecoming head-dresses — move about, 
gracefully leaning on the arms of men in swallow- 
tails and wearing buff waistcoats with brass buttons. 
One may perceive the jaunty form of Nat Willis 
passing from one couple to another and exchanging 
rather florid compliments. The black retainers in 
livery flit to and fro. A cavalcade with blooded 
horses comes clattering up the long straight road 
from a gallop in the moonlight. The burly form 
of Anthony TroUope himself perhaps strides out, 
and you can even hear his voice as he boister- 
ously lays down the law on the subject of America 



TRENTON FALLS, NEW YORK 305 

and denounces American hotels. It is all a vision 
of the past, of a past that we are rapidly forgetting, 
but that comes back amid the mystery of moonlight 
to the sound of the cataract's deep voice at Trenton 
Falls. 



20 



VI 

ATLANTIC CITY, NEW JERSEY 

Altantic City, like every other place and like every 
person, has its varying phases. Its winter phase 
makes it agreeable to visit, but does not show it as 
especially unlike the usual self-respecting winter 
home. A sprinkling of the right sort of people are 
scattered about in such of its hotels as are themselves 
of the right sort. They represent dwellers in North- 
ern cities, leaving home for a week or ten days so as 
to escape the fatigues of Christmas, which has now 
become the most hideous festival of the entire year. 
They either know each other, or they have friends in 
common, and therefore you feel as though you were 
one of a very pleasant house-party, free to bask in 
the glorious sun-parlours, and to smoke pretty much 
everywhere you like ; while the service and the cuisine 
are always unexceptionable. It is really very delight- 
ful to spend Christmas week, for instance, in Atlantic 
City. You are in the company of well-bred people 
^of men who are intelligent, of matrons who are 



ATLANTIC CITY, NEW JERSEY 307 

cordial, and of pretty girls who are properly chaper- 
oned, after the fashion which satisfies the conven- 
tions, but which also tactfully implies that there is 
no real need of chaperonage. 

The second phase of Atlantic City is seen about 
Easter-time. Then the place wakens into life of a 
more active sort. The air is soft. There is a hum 
of activity along the Boardwalk. There is a good 
deal of display in the matter of feminine costumes.* 
One gets an impression of flowers and of dainty 
things. There is just enough crispness in the air to 
give it an exhilaration, while suggesting still the 
nascent spring. A note is sounded that will soon 
deepen into something more vibrant and intoxicating ; 
yet in April it merely sounds, ever so faintly, the 
penetrating call. But even then, although thousands 
of visitors are in evidence, the Atlantic City of which 
I am going to write has not yet been roused from its 
sluggish winter sleep. Like the Mugger of Mugger- 
Ghat, it still lies well concealed and merely stirs its 
tail, so to speak, making only the very slightest 
ripple in the tranquil surface overhead. 

But go to Atlantic City in midsummer, when the 
whole place has sprung into a wild, barbaric, roar- 



308 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

ing madness, and then you will see something the like 
of which can exist neither in the heavens above, nor 
in the earth beneath, nor in the waters under the 
earth. At least, so I should fancy. There may be 
other regions somewhere below that resemble it, but 
they certainly cannot surpass it in luridness or in a 
great many other things. 

In the first place, however, for the benefit of such 
as have never been there, I ought to give a sort of 
general descriptive background of all the rest that I 
am to narrate. Picture to yourself a boardwalk — 
not a little skimpy boardwalk, but a vast wooden 
avenue, stretching for seven miles along the ocean 
front, and reared so high above the sea, that, at high 
tide, a mass of rushing, foaming, thundering waves 
comes plunging underneath it. Between the Board- 
walk and the sea there is at low tide a great strip 
of sand which is probably white at the beginning of 
the summer, but which assumes the colour of pepper 
and salt after a few millions of human animals have 
wallowed in it during the heated season. On this 
strip of sand there are a multitude of tents, and thou- 
sands of easy canvas chairs in which you can lie 
back and look up into the sky and think of nothing. 



ATLANTIC CITY, NEW JERSEY 309 

There are also donkeys and donkey-boys, and ponies 
and mangy horses, and " artists " who execute sea- 
scapes in the damp sand; and there are also itin- 
erant venders of every sort of edible, that no one 
ever ought to touch, from " salt-water taffy " and 
great pink canes of peppermint candy reeking of 
glucose down to peanuts and " hot dogs." Again, 
there must be at least fifty thousand people scattered 
about in bathing clothes of every possible shape and 
size and colour. They come in phalanxes from out 
the bathing-houses which debouch beneath the Board- 
walk; and the bathers yell if they be males, or they 
shriek and giggle if they be females, and they sprawl 
in the sand and do almost everything except plunge 
into the sea. It is a fearsome sight to watch this 
writhing, weltering host. Now and then you may 
perceive a pair of innocent young girls playing 
in the sand, entirely unconscious of the saturnalia 
which is all about them ; but, as a rule, the antics of 
the mob are neither joyous nor edifying. Shock- 
haired youths lie with their heads in the laps of 
frowsy-looking women who comb their hair; and 
those who are interested in the subject may classify 
at least a hundred new varieties of public love- 



310 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

making. All this is what you see — or rather a part 
of what you see — down on the sand below the Board- 
walk. It goes on without any intermission from sun- 
rise until midnight; and the bellowing and braying 
and hooting and shrieking are enough to qualify 
almost any one for Bedlam. 

But, after all, this pandemonium in the sand, 
though it be enough to make Atlantic City in summer 
the maddest place on earth, is really nothing whatso- 
ever by comparison. People on the Boardwalk above 
barely give it more than a casual glance. The Board- 
walk itself is the second phenomenon ; and the great 
hotels back of the Boardwalk with their heterogene- 
ous adjuncts form the third and most peculiar feature 
of the place. Atlantic City, therefore, like ancient 
Gaul, is divided into three parts. What passes for 
Atlantic City on the maps — that is to say, the com- 
mercial and indigenous portions, we may leave out 
of sight altogether. Probably there are people in- 
habiting some of these back-streets who have never 
seen the Boardwalk in all their lives. Therefore let 
us not discuss the actual town at all, and speak only 
of what is meant by the average individual when he 
says (in summer) that he is going to Atlantic City. 



ATLANTIC CITY, NEW JERSEY 311 

Thej are marvellous, these huge hotels, which ex- 
tend at intervals along the seven miles of boardwalk. 
A few of them are everything that could be desired. 
A good many of them are slightly " sporty." A 
great many others are such that you would neither 
care to visit them nor to mention them to your 
friends. Like the great Baedeker of Germany, in 
whose footsteps I am humbly treading, I may venture 
to set down here the names of just a few hotels that 
are absolutely safe. The mention of them involves 
no necessary reflection upon the others. It is like 
the asterisk which you will find prefixed in the guide- 
books of my master to the names of certain hostelries. 
The others may or may not be of the first order ; but 
these surely are. Such, for instance, is the Hotel 
Brighton, which combines quiet, comfort, luxury, and 
dignity in the most admirable fashion. I think that 
I can say as much for the Traymore and certainly 
for Haddon Hall. Many of the others I have never 
stayed in, and I have sometimes wished that of those 
which I did explore I had never seen a single one. 
But after all, life is life; and an irresponsible trav- 
eller must look into the weirder corners of the earth 
and get the full rich flavour of a haunt such as 



312 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

Atlantic City. Consequently I say nothing about 
those parts of it where you find well-bred people act- 
ing in a well-bred fashion. It is much more instruc- 
tive to visit the lairs which make up the Atlantic City 
jungle; and to study the habits and customs of the 
animals who swarm there. 

Really, in the first place, it is difficult to know just 
where one should begin — such a wealth of marvels 
lies open to the view. I may premise, however, with a 
bit of practical philosophy, to the effect that you can 
always judge of the real nature of a hotel and of its 
patrons by observing the conduct of the waiters in 
its dining-room. It makes no difference whether you 
pay two dollars a day or ten dollars a day for the 
same sort of a room. This is no criterion of excel- 
lence or of character. I have in mind one of the most 
expensively constructed hotels in Atlantic City. The 
view from it is beautiful. Its appointments are luxu- 
rious. Its prices are fabulous. That is where I 
started in. Going to luncheon, I was struck by the 
beauty of the room ; but on the way to my place,' the 
head waiter, who conducted me, was thrust aside 
by another head waiter, who claimed that I was his 
lawful prey. They stopped right there to have it 



ATLANTIC CITY, NEW JERSEY 313 

out, shaking their fists in each other's faces and 
uttering curses which were both low and deep. Leav- 
ing them to brawl to their hearts' content, I quietly 
picked out a place for myself; but not for fifteen 
minutes did any waiter appear to serve me. When 
he did so appear, he addressed me casually as " Boss," 
and when he quite failed to understand something 
that I said, he remarked (with a rising slide) 
" Huh ? " Now any human being who says " Huh ? " 
no matter what the occasion or to whom, ought to be 
impaled upon a stake and burned alive pour encour- 
ager les autres. Such a person has sunk to the very 
lowest depths of barbarism, and the world can have 
no use for him. Coming back, however, to this par- 
ticular waiter, he loafed and dawdled, leaned easily 
against the wall at intervals, and dropped into a cas- 
ual conversation. At the last, when I desired a light, 
he produced a box of pink-headed matches and ignited 
one upon the seat of his trousers. And this was in 
one of the most elaborate and expensive hotels of 
Atlantic City! What was the real significance of 
what I saw.? Why simply that the people whom these 
waiters had served were practically no more civilised 
than gorillas. Qiuiils dominus talis servus. This 



S14 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

rule has a universal application. Note it down, and 
remember it not merely in Atlantic City, but all over 
the world. The servant always reflects the general 
attitude of the persons whom he habitually serves. 
So, in the Atlantic City hotels, you will see men clap- 
ping the waiters on the back, and you will see women 
dressed in Paris gowns talking familiarly and j esting 
with their servitors, who inwardly despise them; for 
a really good waiter is one of the finest flowers of 
civilisation. He knows, or comes to know quite soon, 
the difference between pinchbeck and true metal ; and 
even a ten-dollar tip from an Altoona bar-keeper can- 
not extract from him more than a perfunctory civility. 
You will find pretty soon that the general run of 
summer people at Atlantic City are quite in keeping 
with the waiters and the bell-boys and the office-clerks 
of the hotels. Of course, there are many who some- 
times visit Atlantic City; and there are others who 
often go there; but it is the ones who must go there 
and who could n't possibly go anywhere else that 
interest the scientific mind. They are persons whom, 
in a whole lifetime, one would never meet in any other 
place. They represent the strip of territory which 
runs vaguely west from Philadelphia through Ohio, 



ATLANTIC CITY, NEW JERSEY 315 

and then somewhere into the Mississippi Valley. I 
wrote a good deal about them a number of years ago ; 
and I doubt whether there is much that I can add ; since 
more recent observation only shows how right I was. 
The men are mainly railroad men and manufac- 
turers — not the heads of railways, but assistants 
and deputies and lieutenants. They have money in 
abundance without being vastly rich, and they come 
to Atlantic City because it so exactly suits their bar- 
barous ideal of what is fine. They know absolutely 
nothing beyond the narrow limits of their own voca- 
tions. They never read a book. They rarely read 
a magazine. Only now and then do they even read 
a newspaper. They never think of anything outside 
the subject of iron or coal or pork or wheat or railway 
rates. They incarnate crass materialism in its most 
hopeless form ; because they do not even know that 
there is any other life outside the life they live. They 
are a wonderful study, a truly fearful spectacle. 
They are the nether millstone upon whose hard, 
coarse, flinty surface all the graces of life and all 
the ideality of existence are ground to atoms. They 
are incapable even of the enjoyment which they seek, 
though the glitter and noise and bustle of Atlantic 



S16 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

City stimulate their sluggish brains. And therefore 
they come here and sit in the stuccoed " grottoes " 
and eat and drink, and chew big black cigars and 
bully the waiters or else make intimates of them, while 
they listen to the coon-songs that are played for them 
in one unending bray of brass. A more joyless set 
of human beings you can discover nowhere, unless it 
be among their womenkind — their wives and daugh- 
ters who accompany them. 

A very curious lot of women are these wives and 
daughters. They have the self-repression of pro- 
vincials from petty towns, and they dress like prin- 
cesses of the blood royal. They devote nearly all the 
daytime to their gowns, in the changing of which they 
spend many hours, and in the display of which they 
occupy nearly all the rest. They talk but little. 
They do not often flirt except as I shall note below. 
Of anything worth while they are absolutely igno- 
rant ; but they know a great deal about milliners and 
manicures, and they are always superstitious ; so 
that the fifty or sixty palmists, wizards, sooth- 
sayers, clairvoyants, hypnotists, Hindus, and pseudo- 
Egyptians, whose stalls are found along the Board- 
walk reap an easy fortune from them. They gossip 



ATLANTIC CITY, NEW JERSEY 317 

over these fortune-tellers' yarns; and they have 
various theories about Zozo Kenilworth, who is sup- 
posed to have read the palms of royalty. But neither 
to' them nor to the men they know do the days bring 
any genuine, spontaneous pleasure. What should 
they know of pleasure, being ignorant of the fact 
that pleasure is quite as much subjective as objec- 
tive ; and that, if you are a fool, all the glories of the 
world are wasted on your vacuous eye and feeble 
brain? But when the season ends, these people feel 
that they have done the proper thing. They have 
dressed much and have displayed their dresses. They 
have spent long hours with hair-dressers and mani- 
cures and practitioners of massage. Hence they go 
back contentedly to Tonawanda or Pittsburg or Chil- 
licothe for another nine months' period of hibernation. 
Somehow their story is all told when you note the 
fact that at the office desks of the large hotels 
there are placed heaps of advertising cards which 
say : " Use Rubbin's Rouge ! It Does Not Come Off 
in the Salt Water." 

I have said that women of this type do not flirt 
to any great extent ; and this is true. The Western 
Pennsylvania woman who arrives here even alone and 



S18 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

without a chaperone may be viewed as being abso- 
lutely proper when it comes to fundamentals. Yet 
the tilings which she will do are rather starthng. 
You find her analogue among Americans in Paris. 
In that capital of pleasure, the young American 
girl of seventeen, who at home never appears with- 
out an escort, seldom visits the theatre, and only 
then to witness plays that are unobjectionable, will 
in Paris be taken by her own father and mother and 
brothers to the Jardin de Paris or the Casino de 
Paris, just as they used to be taken to the Bal Bul- 
lier or the Moulin Rouge, there to rub elbows with 
the foulest creatures upon earth and to watch La 
Goulue or Grille d'Egout do the " split." Thus it 
is that women who in their home towns are wholly 
decorous and will never go to anything more excit- 
ing than an ice-cream sociable or the strawberry 
festival of the First Presbyterian Church will, in 
Atlantic City, be absolutely careless about the minor 
mores. One of these women, staying alone at a 
hotel, will, after the third meal, become acquainted 
with some man who sits at the same table with her. 
On the next day she will be rolling about with him 
in a " chair," while in less than a week she will be 



ATLANTIC CITY, NEW JERSEY 319 

visiting " grottoes " with him in the evening, and 
drinking high-balls. It is an instructive and curious 
fact that the high-ball is almost the universal drink 
among the generality at Atlantic City. Oddly, they 
resist the temptation of showing off their abundant 
money by " opening wine," which, in the language 
of their sort, means drinking freely of the noble 
vintage of Champagne. But, as I was saying, the 
lady in question will drink high-balls with this 
stranger seven nights in the week and yet will not 
have any thought of harm. Perhaps if her lover 
or her absent husband knew of her diversions, these 
would not please him; yet none the less he might 
rest entirely at his ease. 

What appears to be more like genuine flirtation 
is seen in the case of Southern women whose sum- 
mers are partly spent in Atlantic City. Indeed, as 
a rule, only Southern and Western women visit the 
place in summer. The climate is too enervating for 
those who live farther north. Let us then take the 
Southern woman as you see her here. So far as 
I am aware, the Southern woman has never been de- 
scribed from a psychological point of view. She is 
a frequent figure in romances, and the writers of 



320 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

romances always expatiate on her personal charms. 
How many novels, I wonder, have used the phrases 
" luxuriant, dark hair," " the slumbrous eyes," " the 
easy, indolent grace " and the " the soft, caressing 
voice, with its delicious Southern drawl"? At any 
rate, these descriptions are stereotyped, and they 
may be taken as fairly true. But in the books, the 
Southern woman is made to act and speak and think 
precisely like any other kind of woman, except that 
in the more stirring stories she is supposed to be 
somewhat haughty and revengeful. Perhaps she is 
haughty and revengeful; but in the ordinary in- 
tercourse of life these two traits do not usually 
come to the surface. 

The most striking characteristics of the Southern 
woman, when one comes to sum them up, are three. 
First of all, the Southern woman is a man's woman, 
and not a woman's woman. In the second place, 
she is a self-confessed and confirmed coquette. And, 
finally, she is very elementary in both of these, so 
that she appeals more enduringly to boys who are 
elementary themselves, and to old men, who find it 
refreshing to go back to elementary things. When 
she meets you, the Southern woman intimates that 



ATLANTIC CITY, NEW JERSEY 321 

she has made innumerable conquests. She never 
waits for you to find it out or to infer it from her 
fascinations ; but she tells you all about it. You 
are permitted to assume, however, that she is not 
unwilling to break one more heart, and you are en- 
couraged to offer yours for that interesting pur- 
pose. It is evident from this that the Southern 
woman's talk is rather personal, and so it is. She 
practises all her fascinations on you. She assumes 
that you are humbly grateful to be ordered here 
and there. She wants to make you feel her moods, 
to be downcast at her displeasure, to exult at her 
graciousness — in short, to revolve about her as one 
of her attendant satellites. She will accept any 
amount of flattery, and she likes it in good, strong 
doses, with all the i's dotted and all the fs crossed; 
but she is not really moved by it. She takes it as 
her rightful due. In short, she is a coquette rather 
than a flirt; for in true flirt age there is a much 
more delicate shading and far less assumption. 

So much for the Southern woman at Atlantic City 
or anywhere. Of course, I have been speaking only 
of those portions of Atlantic City which are re- 
spectable though bizarre. Naturally there is a great 

21 



322 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

deal of coarse and oifensive vice, as well as some 
which hides itself rather artfully from the eye of 
the casual observer. For instance, the sopliisticated 
know of one hotel along the Boardwalk which is 
perfect in its appointments, where everything is 
quiet and apparently reposeful, and where the prices 
are quite in keeping with the rest. It is an excel- 
lent hotel; yet no one who visits it is apt to men- 
tion the fact, save perhaps to a, very intimate 
friend. There are enough legends current about it 
to fill a volume; but as I do not know whether 
they are altogether true, it is hardly worth one's 
while to mention even the mildest of them. Suffice 
it to quote the familiar saying that in summer at 
Atlantic City " everything goes." Recently, the 
Governor of the State of New Jersey tried to sup- 
press some of the most violently illegal of its pastimes ; 
and he found that the sworn officers of the law im- 
pudently refused to act. It was not until he had 
threatened to quarter troops upon Atlantic City 
and govern it by martial law that the Boardwalk 
grew serious and reformed a little bit. It is quite 
in the Atlantic City spirit that I should love to 
see about fifty batteries of heavy siege artillery let 



ATLANTIC CITY, NEW JERSEY 323 

loose upon the place at once. How magnificent 
would be the crashing in of all the caravanserais, 
the shattering of the junk-shops, the saloons, the grot- 
toes, the piers, and the gaudy hotels, while the 
whole Boardwalk went flaming up to Heaven in seven 
miles of fire! 

But this is perhaps extreme. Take the place as 
it is and you will have to admit that it is unique. 
Throw together in one mad jumble, the bazaars of 
Constantinople, the city of Allahabad during a 
Mohurrum riot, Mount Vesuvius in eruption, Mes- 
sina during an earthquake, and five thousand luna- 
tic asylums, and you will have a faint notion of what 
Atlantic City in midsummer is really like. For, in 
fact, it does resemble notliing else in the whole 
wide world. I have often said that if some foreign 
potentate were to be turned over to me so that I 
might show him in America a sight that would 
impress him beyond anything that he had seen be- 
fore, I should not take him to Niagara Falls or to 
the big trees of California or to the Yellowstone or 
to the Grand Canon of the Colorado, or to the 
Brooklyn Bridge or to any other place or region 
of which foreigners have heard. I should hurry him 



SU THE NEW BAEDEICER 

at once to Atlantic City and let the full outrageous- 
ness of it burst upon him all at once. From the 
balcony of some hotel along the Boardwalk, I would 
bid him look forth. I should absolutely know that 
he was experiencing a genuine sensation. 

Atlantic City is an eighth wonder of the world. 
It is overwhelming in its crudeness — barbaric, hide- 
ous and magnificent. There is something colossal 
about its vulgarity. There is something fascinating 
in its kaleidoscopic multitudinousness. A brilliant 
front of seashore extending unbrokenly for miles 
and miles along the majestic ocean; and then, lin- 
ing that superb sweep of coast, a frantic, fantastic 
maniac's dream of peep-shows, cigar-shops, merry- 
go-rounds, street-pianos, bazaars, hotels, fortune- 
tellers' booths, Chinese laundries, theatres, flower- 
stands, and bar-rooms — of every conceivable size 
and shape and colour — blue, green, scarlet, gold, 
and purple — smiting you in the eye and making 
you gasp at the extravagant outrageousness of it 
all. And between this gaudy labyrinth and the sea 
there run the seven miles of boardwalk packed with 
fifty thousand human beings, so jammed together 
as to resemble a roaring torrent, broken only by 



ATLANTIC CITY, NEW JERSEY S25 

tlie basket-chairs propelled by grinning negroes. 
Scores of excursion trains vomit other thousands 
into this seething whirlpool, and they gabble and 
eat and stew and steam with all the rest. 

When darkness falls, then the whole place leaps 
out in a glare of electric light, until the entire coast 
seems like a vast single sheet of multicoloured fire. 
Huge piers thrust their noses far out into the ocean 
and blazon forth in flaming letters, twenty feet in 
length, the merits of a certain kind of pickle or of 
a special brand of rank five-cent cigar. Brass bands 
crash discordantly into each other's blaring notes, 
while scores of orchestras set to work madly in the 
different hotels and eating-places. Hand-organs 
grind on forever. A dozen concert-halls send forth 
fragmentary bellowings to add their seeming cries of 
agony to the universal din. It is infernal — it is 
astonishing — and it is infinitely picturesque. No 
single human being ever could describe it. If we 
could group together Shakespeare, Rudyard Kip- 
ling, Walt Whitman, Upton Sinclair, Thomas W. 
Lawson and Richard Wagner, and in some way drive 
them suddenly insane; if we could then fill them 
full of brandy, and at the height of their wild de- 



326 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

lirium get them to rave in collaboration about At- 
lantic City, then they might possibly convey a faint 
impression of what the place in summer really is. 
Some foolish persons have compared Coney Island 
to Atlantic City; but to compare Coney Island, 
even at its noisiest, to Atlantic City, is like com- 
paring the feeble sputtering of a rain-soaked pin- 
wheel to the concatenated crashing, blasting, blinding 
glare of the Day of Judgment ! 

And yet it is not all like this. Go down to the 
Inlet and take any one of the white-sailed boats that 
are anchored there. It will bear you smoothly over 
the summer sea to the quiet sands of the Brigan- 
tine. Or else, have yourself rolled in a basket-chair 
toward Chelsea; and there you will see the snow- 
white beach slope lovingly to the water that comes 
dimpling in to kiss it. You forget the horrors that 
you have left behind you. You have come forth 
from Perdition, and the scorching smell of flame 
has left you. Here are rest and peace and beauty 
and the charm of Nature undefiled. And, for the 
matter of that, and to be quite fair, this, too, is a 
part of what you can find at Atlantic City. 




The Inlet, Atlantic City 



VII 

FROM MONTREAL TO SAN FRANCISCO 

When one glides over the Canadian frontier in 
a smoothly rolling express-train from New York, 
there is nothing in the landscape to suggest that he 
is passing into the possessions of another nation 
than his own. It all looks very much like a continu- 
ation of the United States. Only one little circum- 
stance proves to him that he has escaped from a 
country which is enslaved by a materiahsed democ- 
racy, and that he has reached a land where, though 
it be ruled by a king, decent consideration is shown 
to every one. It is the well-set up customs-house 
officer who impresses this fact upon you. He does 
not snap his jaws like a steel-trap when he speaks 
to you. He does not ask you to make an affidavit 
as to what you have in your luggage, and then im- 
pudently accuse you of perjury in telling you that 
he does n't believe a word of what you have said 
under oath. For the matter of that, he does n't drag 
your trunks or your belongings around the baggage- 



828 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

car, dump the contents on a dirty floor, and then 
call in a second ruffian to paw over the objects, and 
finally decide, without giving any details, that you 
must pay such and such a sum for " excess luggage." 
The Canadian official knows very well that you 
are not a smuggler. He has a sense of the decencies 
of life. He does n't seek to magnify his office. With 
a polite word or two, he lifts and immediately lowers 
the lids of your trunks, affixes a cabaHstic mark, and 
you are free to enter the dominions of His Majesty, 
King Edward VII. This treatment is a small thing 
in itself, and yet how grateful it is when you com- 
pare with it the scenes of sordidness and swinishness 
which disgrace the port of New York whenever a 
foreign steamer arrives at any of its piers. It is a 
curious thing, this independence of ours, for which 
we fought two wars, yet which to-day we do not in 
reality possess ; since we are the serfs of those who 
are appointed to serve us. The customs-house in- 
spector insults our wives and children. The police- 
man, without a shadow of right, bullies nine-tenths 
of the population who believe that he is the very Law 
itself. We let corporations steal our franchises, 
and then overcharge us for our use of them. We 



MONTREAL TO SAN FRANCISCO 329 

allow combinations of soulless individuals to tax us 
on any pretence, because we send to Congress men 
whose election expenses these corporations have paid, 
and because they have put their former attorneys 
upon the judicial bench. 

Somehow or other it is refreshing for a little while 
to escape from all the different kinds of slave-drivers 
whom America has been breeding for the past thirty 
years. Like one of those fugitives who, before the 
Civil War, fled to Canada by the historic Under- 
ground Railroad, no sooner do we touch British 
soil than we salute the British flag. For it emanci- 
pates us and allows us to forget beneath its folds 
the swarm of " hustlers " who in politics, in com- 
merce, and for that matter, in science, in literature, 
and in education, give no one any rest, but keep 
always stirring such a hell-broth as can be found 
nowhere outside of the United States. Kipling never 
wrote a truer stanza than that in which he charac- 
terises a certain type of the later-day American: 

Or sombre-drunk at mine and mart 
He dubs his dreary brethren "Kings." 
His hands are black with blood: his heart 
Leaps, as a babe's, at little things. 



330 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

And somehow that other line of his, 

Unkempt, disreputable, vast 

rather sticks in one's mind as being painfully near 
a good part of the truth. But, after all, this is rank 
pessimism, and almost treasonable. Such reflections 
are due mainly to having been cooped up for too 
long a time in New York City — that extraordinary, 
heterogeneous Babylon which sometimes makes you 
shudder, yet which draws you back to it irresistibly 
if you have been absent very long. New York is 
almost a nation in itself ; and perhaps the late Fer- 
nando Wood was not so very much out of the way 
when, in 1861, he proposed that it secede from the 
Union and set up for itself. It does n't really belong 
to anything. It is just a tremendous curiosity. 

But these thoughts are dispelled by others when 
you arrive in Montreal and find a city which in its 
own way is altogether unique. Quebec, for example, 
is really French and sixteenth century French at 
that. Toronto, on the other hand, is British with a 
strong admixture of American. But Montreal, while 
it seems to be British, is a singular admixture of 



MONTREAL TO SAN FRANCISCO 831 

what is British and what is not. From the general 
appearance of it you get at first a certain impres- 
sion as of England, although only one-seventh of 
the inhabitants are English, and more than half of 
them are French. It is an admirable example of how 
the Briton manages to impose himself upon places 
and upon people who are not of his own stock. Put 
him down almost anywhere in the world and pres- 
ently you will find bitter beer and Bass's White Label 
and gooseberry tarts, and people always dressing 
for dinner and reckoning their money in pounds, 
shillings, and pence. I suppose the United States 
to be the only country in the world where he cannot 
do so, and where the British sovereign and the Bank 
of England note are looked at contemptuously by 
shopkeepers who will not take them even at a dis- 
count, but want " real money," much to the aston- 
ishment and chagrin of the travelling Englishman. 
But in Montreal, the British element appears to have 
entirely its own way. Dominion Square with its 
huge hotel reveals nothing that suggests the French 
who founded this fine city, centuries ago. If you 
enter the hotel in question, you will find, besides 
breakfast rooms and dining-rooms, " a lady's ordi- 



332 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

nary," — the very name taking you back to the 
England of James I. and The Fortunes of Nigel, 
And it was so like the English to pick out Jacques 
Cartier Square as a place in which to erect a column 
in memory of Lord Nelson ! 

Nevertheless, a somewhat closer examination shows 
you that the French tenacity is quite equal to the 
English obstinacy. The very names of streets and 
buildings tell you this — the Place d'Armes, the Bon- 
secours Market, Notre Dame de Montreal, the 
Chateau de Ramezay, Saint Sulpice, the statue of 
the fine old Sieur de Maisonneuve, with the figures 
of the Iroquois about him, and that of Lambert 
Closse, the first " town-maj or " of the old-time city, 
Ville Marie de Montreal. Often, side by side, you see 
France and England contending with each other 
architecturally. For instance, the moment you be- 
hold the Bank of Montreal, you almost cry out with 
wonder; for it is precisely the London Exchange, 
and you feel that you are going to enter Thread- 
needle Street in a moment or two. But then, placed 
next to it, is the Post-Ofiice, which you are at once 
tempted to call the Bureau des Postes — so French 
is its grey limestone front and its Mansard roof. 



MONTREAL TO SAN FRANCISCO 333 

And you come at the actual truth when you leave 
the public squares and the English shops and the 
Englishwomen shopping there, and go down into 
the heart of the town and find yourself in a labyrinth 
of streets that bear French names. The Doctor and 
I wanted to get a large supply of cartridges for the 
huge revolvers that we had brought with us. Just 
why we had brought them we could not very defi- 
nitely have explained ; only, we were going westward 
some thousands of miles and we had a nebulous notion 
that we might need these weapons for self-protection. 
Possibly it was because we had seen a photograph 
purporting to be that of Vancouver in the early 
period of its still youthful history. That photo- 
graph might well justify the two revolvers. But, 
as I was saying, in our search for cartridges we went 
into many shops of different sorts before finding one 
where cartridges were sold; and in all these shops 
not a soul understood a single word of English. So 
this • was the real Montreal — French at its core, 
though superficially Anglicised. 

And this is why one cannot think of Canada as 
being either wholly French or wholly English. It is, 
in fact, Canadian. It will never be annexed to the 



334 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

United States, and I fancy that the time will come 
when it will cease even nominally to be a possession 
of Great Britain. Here is the true solution of the 
Canadian question — that Canada should become 
either a kingdom or a republic by itself. It has a 
splendid history of its own. It has beautiful cities, 
a wonderfully clean and upright government, and if 
it should put forth its power and snap its leading- 
strings, it could well take high rank as a nation, free 
and self-respecting. At present, it gives me an un- 
comfortable feeling to see Canadians either trying 
to be more English than the English, or else wrap- 
ping themselves up in the tattered Gallicism of three 
hundred years ago. France, of course, can never 
have more than a sentimental interest in the country. 
Englishmen rather look down upon it, as they look 
down upon any set of people who remain under Eng- 
lish control outside of England. Canada at present 
reminds one of a hobbledehoy quite strong enough to 
stand alone and to be a man, but who, nevertheless, 
from force of habit, skulks around in an awkward 
way in at least a moral state of pupillage, wearing 
trousers too short for him and still haunted by the 
fear that, when he speaks, his voice may not be the 



MONTREAL TO SAN FRANCISCO 335 

deep bass of a man but may break and go off into a 
sort of childish falsetto. This, however, will not last 
very long. The young giant will soon stand up and 
stamp his feet and be proud of the name " Canadian." 

All the same, at the present time, the English con- 
tingent is distinctly loyal to the mother country. 
I could n't resist asking rather foolish questions of 
a youth whom I encountered. I said : 

" Do you feel a personal devotion to King Ed- 
ward VII.?" 

" Yes," said he ; "I would die for him ! " 

But the very answer, given with flushed face and 
a sparkle of the eye, showed me how little like an 
Englishman was this young Canadian. An English- 
man would at first have stared and then laughed, 
and then perhaps he would have exclaimed rather 
cryptically : 

" Oh, I say now ! " 

You may be sure that his ch-eeks would not have 
flushed nor his eye have sparkled. Very likely he, 
too, would have died for King Edward, but he would 
have regarded the necessity as a " beastly bore." The 
Canadian, on the other hand, has all the spirit and 
the sentiment of the native-born American. Just 



S36 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

at present he is giving it to England; but the 
time will come when the flag of independent Can- 
ada will stir his soul, and when the Maple-Leaf 
will mean much more to him than the Lion and 
the Unicorn. 

Two great proofs of Canadian energy and far- 
sightedness are to be found in the Victoria Jubilee 
Bridge which was flung across the St. Lawrence near 
Montreal at a cost of twenty million dollars, and 
which is one of the greatest engineering monuments 
in the world ; and then still more the Canadian Pacific 
Railway, extending for three thousand miles across 
the whole of the Dominion, looping itself around the 
massive peaks of the Rockies and then descending to 
the far-off city of Vancouver. When it was com- 
pleted, in 1887, its importance was mainly military. 
By means of it, British troops after being shipped 
from Liverpool to Montreal, could then be whirled 
rapidly across the Continent to the Pacific Ocean. 
Great Britain in 1887 viewed Russia with a distrust- 
ful eye ; and Canada did her part, so that the great 
Empire of the Czars might be swiftly smitten from 
the powerfully fortified naval station at Esquimalt, 
near Victoria. 



MONTREAL TO SAN FRANCISCO 337 

The Doctor and I were mainly interested in the 
Canadian Pacific Railway, since we intended to take 
one of its trains from Montreal and to proceed over 
its whole length to the Pacific Coast. This railway 
has an advantage over any of the American trans- 
continental lines, because the journey involves no 
change; but one can go directly through the vast 
stretches of prairie, the wheat-lands, and the mag- 
nificent mountains, and can do it all in a deliberate, 
comfortable fashion. After you cut loose from the 
towns and cities of Ontario and get out into the 
billowy prairies, you practically own the train. If 
you want to alight and stretch your legs and look at 
a bit of scenery by way of variety, the train will be 
stopped for you, as it will also at the city of Winni- 
peg, where you can stroll around for an hour or so 
in this metropolis of the wheat-lands, in the very 
midst of a thousand miles of loneliness. 

So, after you dispose your luggage in its proper 
place and show a yard or kss of ticket, you can settle 
down with a certain ease and peace of mind very much 
as you would upon an ocean steamer, with the addi- 
tional advantage that if you don't like it you can 

get off and walk. It is advisable to tip the porter 

22 



338 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

rather heavily and suggest to him that at the end 
of the journey another tip will be forthcoming. On 
the whole I am inclined to think that this is quite 
immoral ; for he will give "you a whole section instead 
of a single berth; and when (a day or two later) 
other persons enter who have paid for half of 
that section, he will invent the most ingenious ex- 
planations as to why their tickets are not good and 
will bestow them, grumbling, in some other portion 
of the train. I have often waked up in the middle 
of the night and listened guiltily to the loud expostu- 
lations of casual Canadians and have admired, from 
a purely literary standpoint, the fluent diction and 
the imaginative resources of this porter. But after 
all, it is the through passengers who constitute the 
aristocracy of the train; while others who are going 
only four or five hundred miles must put up with 
what the porter feels it best to give them. He had 
the hardest time of all with the Consul-General of a 
minor European monarchy; and the strife between 
them lasted from midnight until morning. During 
the latter part of it I whistled softly the Brahan- 
gonne, which may have appeased the Consul-General, 
or which, on the other hand, may have driven him 



MONTREAL TO SAN FRANCISCO 339 

into a speechless rage, so that he presently suc- 
cumbed. Anyway, he was a good man, and we after- 
ward became great friends. 

It is a lazy, comfortable, luxurious life, this long 
whirl across the prairies. You can stroll about the 
train and chat with various acquaintances ; enj oy- 
ing the most delicious meals whenever you feel like 
taking them; gazing upon the illimitable miles of 
undulating verdure, sometimes tilled, and sometimes 
covered only with scant grass, and sometimes densely 
populated by prairie-dogs. Their little houses, 
domed and green, about a foot in height, have a smaU 
opening for the family; and at these openings sit 
the masters of the houses, on their hind legs and 
with their paws drooping gently over their furry 
coats. Going out upon the very last platform of the 
last car and letting our legs hang over the miles of 
glittering track that sped away beneath us, the 
Doctor and I found use for our revolvers in bang- 
ing away at the prairie-dogs. I suppose it was the 
instinctive Anglo-Saxon desire to kill something; 
yet I doubt very much whether any prairie-dog lost 
his life beneath our fusillade. Still, since every time 
we fired, the little beasts would drop over backward 



340 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

into their respective holes, we let ourselves imagine 
that our aim was something wonderful. To be sure, 
all the dogs fell over at the same moment, being 
startled by the noise; but that was a small affair, 
and the cry of " I 've hit him ! " continued until all 
our cartridges had been shot away. After that we 
sat no more upon the platform, but studied human 
types in the smoking compartment. 

It was interesting as we went further west to see 
how the American element had impinged upon the 
Canadian. The politics that were talked were not 
Canadian politics. The conductors and even the 
brakemen were betting upon the election in the 
United States. The people who got on and off at 
the infrequent stations were, nine-tenths of them, 
countrymen of ours. Often, to be sure, they were 
not residents of Canada, but were merely there on 
temporary business ; yet one could see and feel the 
effects of American immigration into the rich lands 
whose virgin soil has not yet begun to be exhausted 
by producing several crops a year. 

I hold in grateful remembrance a long lank man 
from Minneapolis, who, for a day and a half before 
reaching Winnipeg, made much talk about himself 



MONTREAL TO SAN FRANCISCO 341 

and about the city where he lived. He confessed 
that he had not been bom there, but was trying hard, 
so he said, " to ketch up." He was the embodiment 
of activity. His face was lean and eager. His eyes 
were bright and keen. He wore a diamond pin, and 
on his feet were two russet shoes of phenomenal 
length and with soles of phenomenal thickness. 
When he talked, he twisted his legs around each other 
in a grapevine sort of fashion, and the glibness of his 
tongue was beyond the glibness of any other tongue 
that I have ever listened to. 

" You 're from the East ? Well, I thought so. 
I was from the East myself, but don't you stay there. 
Come out to Minnesota or Wisconsin, and get alive. 
There 's nothing in the East. It 's all squeezed out. 
Why, there 's men there working — actually working 
— for fifteen or twenty dollars a week. If they 'd 
only come out West they could sleep all day and make 
as much as that, 'n if they hustled around an hour or 
two a day they 'd get three or four hundred dollars 
a month. Poor yaps ! They don't know it, but it 's 
so. Every one makes money in the West." 

" But," said I, " there have been very hard times 
in the West, when no money was in sight at all. It 



342 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

was only two or three years ago that you were pass- 
ing around barbers' tickets and street-car checks, 
and all sorts of bogus paper, because you had n't any 
real money." 

The Man from Minneapolis leered triumphantly. 

" Well," he said, " don't that prove that we 're a 
bigger people than you fellers in the East? I '11 bet 
you could n't do anything with barbers' tickets and 
car-checks in the East. Nobody 'd take 'em there ; 
but out West, when we have n't got any real money, 
we pass out any old thing and it goes just the same 
as gold certificates. You see the difference is this. 
When a panic comes along, you Eastern fellers all 
sit around and howl and think that everything is 
busted up for fair. We don't do that. We say to 
ourselves that this is just an ordinary little riffle, 
just an accident, and that pretty soon everything 
will be twice as good as ever. We 've got hope, we 
have, and we believe in ourselves, and we ain't afraid. 
That 's why I tell you to come out West, and bank 
on the future." - 

He was a very convincing person, this Man from 
Minneapolis. He would boast about anything — 
about their epidemics and the intensity of their cold, 



MONTREAL TO SAN FRANCISCO 343 

and especially about their cyclones. He was par- 
ticularly proud of the cyclones. 

" I tell you," said he, " Minnesota 's the place for 
cyclones. Over in North Dakota they have a few, 
but they 're only balmy little breezes compared with 
what we get in Minnesota. When you hear a noise 
and see a sort of twirly thing coming way off in the 
distance, then you just want to drop everything and 
slide down into your cyclone-cellar as fast as you 
can put." 

" Of course, though," said I, " that must be out 
in the open prairie. They don't have cyclones in 
Minneapolis." 

The Man from Minneapolis looked at me with 
scorn. 

" Well, you bet they do ! " he said. " Minneapolis 
has been ripped up the back half a dozen times since 
I was there. There 's rows and rows of the most 
beautiful private houses just outside the city, and 
every one of them has got a cyclone-cellar. When 
I first went out there, I lived in a boarding-house, 
and one morning I found a man nailing timber across 
the windows." 

" What was that for.? " 



S44 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

" Why, of course, to keep the windows from blow- 
ing in." 

" Well," said I, " I never heard of that, and I 
never read in the papers anything about the epidemic 
of infantile paralysis that you spoke of a little while 
ago." 

The Man from Minneapolis grinned hugely at this, 
and uncoiled his legs with infinite delight. 

" No," he answered, " I 'U bet you did n't, and you 
never will. You see, we 've got things fixed up out 
there. The whole State 's a regular press bureau, 
and everybody 's in it. Just let something fine hap- 
pen, and you 'U read about it in every newspaper in 
the East; but when things go wrong, never a word 
of it gets into any paper anywhere. Oh, we 're solid 
out in Minneapolis ! " 

Presently he rushed out of the " smoker " and, 
after rummaging in his valise, returned with a large 
book full of illustrations beautifully printed on heavy 
paper. 

" Now I '11 show you," he said ; " look at them 
three banks. I guess you have n't got anything 
finer than them in the East. And say! It ain't all 
business, either. Look at this university building. 



MONTREAL TO SAN FRANCISCO 345 

Why, it 's got all your universities skinned a mile. 
And here 's the biggest hotel in Minneapolis, just 
built. Ain't that handsome?" 

I said that it was a very imposing building. But 
after looking at it carefully, I made a comment. 

" Yes, it 's a fine building, but it does n't seem to 
fit in with your statement about cyclones. The win- 
dows have no protection whatever. How is it that 
they are n't all blown in ? " 

The Man from Minneapolis fell into a perfect 
ecstasy when I made this criticism. He winked at me 
three or four times, slapped his knee, and then 
chuckled for several minutes. Finally he said in a 
tone of infinite satisfaction: 

" Well, I guess them windows are pretty well pro- 
tected. Every one of 'em 's got a steel blind that 
draws down over the glass just as tight as they can 
fix it. But don't you see? We ain't putting them 
steel blinds into the picture. That picture 's going 
all over the East, and I guess we don't want to show 
up any steel blinds. All the same," he continued 
meditatively, " them blinds is real pretty. They 're 
painted green, and you would n't ever know they was 
steel." 



346 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

Thus, and at much greater length, discoursed the 
Man from Minneapolis. When he got out at Winni- 
peg, he said rather regretfully: 

" If I 'd been born in Minneapolis, I guess I 
would n't let you get away. I 'd follow you just as 
far as you went yourself. Yes, sir, I 'd just track 
you down. Well, good-bye." 

Precisely what the Man from Minneapohs meant by 
this dark saying I have never been quite sure; but 
probably if he had tracked me down, he would either 
have sold me something, or have got me to endorse 
his note, or have given me a thousand shares of 
stock in a nascent railroad. But he departed, hurry- 
ing up the main street of Winnipeg, and I never saw 
him any more. On the whole, he was an inspiring 
person, and he really did typify the conquering 
American who never gives up, who has infinite cour- 
age, and whose faith in the future never falters for 
a moment. 

After leaving Winnipeg, there was more prairie, 
but presently the monotony was broken by the spurs 
of mountains which prepare one for the grandeur 
of the Rockies. Little stations caused the train to 
stop at times, though I do not know precisely at 



MONTREAL TO SAN FRANCISCO 347 

what times ; for the Canadian Pacific Railway is run 
on the twenty-four system and it is too much trouble 
for an irresponsible traveller to figure out into ordi- 
nary notation such hours as half-past eighteen 
o'clock, and twenty-three o'clock, and things like 
that. What difference did it make? The train ran 
smoothly. Everything was harmonious. The air 
was fresh and bracing, and there was a delightful 
absence of cinders. 

Merely as a study in geographical terminology, 
I could n't help noticing how the English and Ameri- 
can elements of these western provinces were curi- 
ously commingled. Regina smacked of Canada — 
of English Canada. Brandon and Mortlake and 
Suffield and Rosslyn and Revelstoke were the Eng- 
lish of England. But right here on British soil you 
come across a fort which is formall}'' and officially 
styled Fort Whoop-up, and then you feel that some- 
thing American has permeated even the military 
system of Canada. The Indians are not forgotten, 
for there is the station called Medicine-Hat, besides 
Kamloops and the glorious canon of the Kicking 
Horse River. It is at this last place, indeed, that 
you begin to find scenery as wild and yet as beautiful 



348 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

as any in the world. Down in the great cleft be- 
tween the mountains there roars and foams and thun- 
ders the tremendous torrent of the pent-up stream. 
Around the peaks whose summits in the middle of the 
summer are white with snow, the two ribbons of steel 
on which your train is running, wind in the most 
daring fashion. When the engine is mysteriously 
transferred to the rear and you are pushed up a 
steep incline with much groaning and quivering, then 
you have come to the very Garden of the Gods, to an 
Olympus more awe-inspiring than that in Thessaly. 
Now the train pauses so that you may dine or break- 
fast at little chalets ; and after breakfast you can 
go out and stand in a patch of blossoming clover; 
and presently there will come tumbKng down from 
above a mass of fleecy, pure white snow, which 
gleams among the clover leaves under a summer sun. 
It is all most fascinating, and from this time your 
attention is continually alert — the green glaciers, 
the continually increasing height of the mountains, 
the distant snow fields, the natural bridge, the bridle- 
trails down which there ride at times officers and 
troopers of the Mounted Police, a splendid set of 
fighting men, sitting their horses like centaurs; the 




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MONTREAL TO SAN FRANCISCO 349 

silver mines, and then the great loop which twists and 
turns, doubling back upon its own course through 
long gashes cut into the great Ross Peak. The 
snow-sheds through which one does not usually pass 
in summer give striking evidence of what these gorges 
must be in the depth of winter. 

In short, I have never seen anything that could 
compare with the bold and almost savage beauty of 
this region. Farther south, in the United States, the 
Rockies are fine, yet comparatively tame. The Alps 
would be almost as fine if they were not peppered all 
over with inns where people burn blue fire and turn 
on electric lights under the waterfalls, and where 
tourists tramp about in such numbers as to make 
you feel that you are in Piccadilly or sometimes 
in Bedlam. There will come an age, it may be, when 
the Rockies and the Selkirks shall also be afflicted in 
like manner ; but as yet they are almost as they were 
when the Indian whose mummy, discovered some ten 
years ago and probably ten centuries old, was glid- 
ing in and out of the wild passes, killing his game with 
flints and gnawing the raw flesh from the bones. 

From Vancouver you go by steamer to Victoria 
and find that you have come out once more into civ- 



350 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

ilisation. It is not the civilisation that one expects 
upon the Pacific Coast, but a much older one than 
that, with beautiful broad streets, dignified-looking 
country houses, and parks and flower gardens, all 
British to the last degree. It might be in Kent or 
in any part of England, were the sky not so beauti- 
fully bright and blue. It is a stolid, well-behaved and 
most respectable city. How it happened to be there 
in the remote West, it is difficult to say. The Doctor 
and I had a sort of theory that the place was a whited 
sepulchre; and that being so very far away, it must 
somehow have dangerous and deadly points about it 
— if not by day, at least by night. Therefore, we 
purchased some more cartridges and, like Mr. Rich- 
ard Harding Davis in Port Said, sallied forth to see 
what frightful things we could discover. The lights 
in all the houses were extinguished and the streets 
were empty, yet we did not allow these facts to shake 
our theory; and indeed, after prowling for a long 
while, we came up on a place in which some lights 
were glimmering. As it was obviously not a private 
house and as the front door was ajar, we ventured 
cautiously to enter it, keeping each one hand upon 
the butt of a revolver. Mr. Davis was mean enough 



MONTREAL TO SAN FRANCISCO 351 

not to tell what he found in Port Said. But what 
we found were two bank presidents playing billiards. 
Therefore, I hereby cheerfully give the city of Vic- 
toria, B. C, a certificate of character and really do 
beheve that all its people except bank presidents 
retire promptly at nine p. m. 

It is a more comfortable mode of travelling to go 
from Vancouver to San Francisco entirely by rail; 
yet, as it is worth while to have made a voyage upon 
the Pacific, you can take at Victoria a particularly 
vicious and much-rolling steamer, on which they will 
feed you curried rice and get you past the Golden Gate 
at just about the time when the most hideous desert 
would seem delightful to you, after so much tossing 
and shaking and so much curried rice. The Golden 
Gate is itself exquisitely beautiful — most of all when 
you glide through it while the moonlight is touching 
the rocks and making them appear to be great masses 
of lustrous pearls surrounding a sea of molten silver. 
And then the customs-house officials are of a different 
breed from those who infest New York. You can 
enter the port at any hour of the night and they do 
not seem to be ruffled; nor, on the other hand, do 
they ruffle you. 



352 THE NEW BAEDEKER 

Regarding San Francisco I cannot write ; for the 
San Francisco that was mine has been wrecked by 
earthquake and consumed by fire. What need for 
me to tell of the din of Market Street, of the great 
patio in the Palace Hotel, of the Cafe Riche, of the 
Chinatown that was, of the Cliff House that I knew, 
of the thousand and one delightful reminders of the 
time when men called the city " Yerba Buena " in 
their melKfluous Castilian tongue, and of the later 
days when its history was one of mingled. showers and 
sunshine. All these have been described by Mr. Irwin 
in a manner which I could not hope to rival and with 
a knowledge which no casual traveller could possibly 
possess. To that older San Francisco I pay the 
tribute of a reverential silence, pronouncing the 
single word which best befits it — Adios, 



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